Richard, the Third
by Gevaisa
Summary: The characters from Richard the Third have been born in the future.  Events play out somewhat differently...
1. Part One: Discontent

**RICHARD THE THIRD**

**Part One: Discontent**

Exactly twenty-two years ago yesterday, I realized what the ambition of my life was going to be.

The screen on the ID module read:

**--Fall Semester Academic Year 2261-2262--**

--Today's date: 08/22/2261--

--Please use a fresh, sterile, disposable scraper to collect a fresh DNA sample--

I took a plastic scraper from a container of them, unwrapped it, and harvested a few thousand cells from the inside of my mouth.

--Please insert the disposable scraper with your DNA sample into the green slot--

I did. The slot hummed and clicked as it drew in the scraper

--Thank You--

--Please fill in the fields with your personal information as requested--

I heard my mother talking in the next room, where she and my father were meeting with the college registrar. "No, we have three children. All boys. Edward's our oldest, he's twenty-four. He should be through with his schooling next year. George is our middle child, he's fifteen, and he's not academically ready for college yet, that's not at all unusual. Well, you should know! Richard, the third—the one we're here with today— is, though."

_Am I academically ready for college, or am I unusual? Or do you mean both, Mom? _I thought.

Because of my mother's chosen faith, she was opposed to excessive medical procedures, such as the normal round of pre-natal tests. This didn't matter during her first two pregnancies. Edward and George were born healthy and whole, without complications. I...was different. It wasn't until she was in labor with me, huffing and panting, that a physician waved a sophroniscope over her belly and said, "Uh-oh."

The doctor advised an immediate caesarian, with a second team standing by to get me into surgery on arrival, but she refused. Served her right; it was a hideously long and painful experience. I wasn't in a hurry to be born. I was never stupid, not even then.

I turned my attention back to the ID module. I was beginning to think I had made a mistake. Not with the ID; with my entire plan.

I should have been happy, that late summer day. It was a day of victory for me. I was beginning college; this was my first day, in fact. My fourteenth birthday was a little over a month in the future.

--First name-- **Richard** --Last name--**Genet-York**

My right hand danced over the key fields. My useless left hand lay in my lap, curled like the claw of a dead bird. I had invested a lot of hope in college. I had worked hard to get in as soon as I could—but never given much thought as to what actually being in college would be like.

-- Date of Birth: mm/dd/yyyy--I entered it.

"You're a bore," remarked Amelia, my care-provider, interestedly.

"Excuse me?" I asked her.

"You were born in the year of the boar," she explained. A homonym; she wasn't accusing me of being tedious. She told me what it meant in Chinese astrology while I filled out more of the fields. Gender, grade, course of study, racial identity…

--Distinguishing Characteristics--

How should I put it? **A botched abortion **…I couldn't put _that_ down! I backed up. **Congenital deformity of **…No. I cleared the field. **Birth defects including**… No. I cleared it again. **Scoliosis**…

The first and most obvious malformation was my back, with its hump and its unnatural curve. Next came my left arm; it dangled uselessly, and ended in a hand that was usually clamped into a brace to keep the fingers from growing into a permanently clenched fist. My hand resisted treatment; the braces buckled and broke regularly. I had no control over it at all. My ribcage was more circular than oval in shape. It constricted my heart and lungs, and my stamina as well. Then my left leg was shorter than my right by three centimeters, an almost minor grievance in comparison to all the others, but it made me walk with a painful lurch if I wasn't wearing corrective shoes. Added to that was moon-pale skin, light blond hair, and eyes like ice water—my mother's words—in a face that looked starved, although I was a normal weight for my height.

I continued with the medically correct description, but paused when I heard my father say, "I know people are made uneasy by talk about religion, but we are members of the Church of God's Image. I believe we are, all of us, aspects of God. He chose to make Richard as He did, and so Richard is different than most people. I do not, will not, question Him, nor dare to tell Him He did wrongly. When Richard is of age, if he so chooses, he can do as he wants. Until then… We've done our best to raise him right."

_That shows what you know, Dad, _I thought as I finished enumerating my defects. I cliked Completeto input them.

--You have exceeded the character limit for this field.--

--Please edit.--

_Yes_, I thought, as I cleared it again. _Someday I will edit, not the description, but the body it describes, until I can write None in that space._

I don't remember how old I was when I realized this vital truth—which means I must have been very young indeed, but I remember where I was. I was in church, with my parents and my brothers.

_The Church of God's Image believes surgery is wrong._

_My family belongs to it._

_I had to have a lot of surgery when I was born, just to stay alive._

_Therefore…_. I still remember that cold, sick feeling that came over me. Still remember it? I can feel it still—beginning in my stomach, and coiling down around my bowels and up my throat. Thinking of it wakes that sensation into unhappy life. It will never entirely leave me.

_Therefore, my family thinks it's wrong that I'm alive._

And I realized I could not trust them. I was alone.

It's ironic. My parents couldn't deny me the medical care that would keep me alive, but they could and did deny me the corrective procedures that would make my life worth living.

I finally pared down my description of myself to something that would fit on an ID, and cliked Complete again.

I had been naive. I thought that once I was away from home, once I was out of our narrow Imagist enclave, people would look at me differently. The short walk to the Registrar's had burst that particular bubble of mine. Clammy fingers of doubt were plucking creepy, minor-key chords on my tightened nerves, and my stomach was beginning to ball up.

I knew where to lay the blame for part of that uncharacteristic idealism of mine. I had met someone a few months before, someone who had given me hope. It wasn't really fair of me to blame her, all things considered. But when had that ever stopped me?

This is a flashback within a flashback, so you've been warned. Don't get lost.

I was a child, and she was a child…

What did they expect me to _do_ with her? She was a really pretty little girl. Her hair was the color of iced tea, caught in pigtails, and she was wearing a violet tunic with orange and yellow sunflowers on it, matching leggings, and a yellow jacket with embroidered caterpillars marching down the arms. Her name was Primavera.

I could hardly have wished for a cuter little sister, but she wasn't my sister, she was a visitor's daughter. They foisted us off on each other, and I was left to entertain her in our family room. She was six or seven and I was a teenager. So what did they expect me to do with her?

"Why don't your parents take you to have an operation?" She tilted her head and questioned me with her velvet-brown eyes as well as her words.

It was a reasonable question, if a rude one, considering what she saw when she looked at me.

"My parents think God says it's wrong to have surgery," I told her.

She thought about it for a moment. "That's _stu_pid," she concluded.

"I know," I said, with feeling. "Why did your father bring you along?" I had answered her personal question; it was only fair that she answer mine. It wasn't because he had no one to leave her with. Our respective care providers were sharing coffee and gossip at the counter.

"I have panicky attacks when he's not home," she replied, and added, matter-of-factly, "I'm adopted."

"Oh," I said. "Okay."

"I screamed and cried all the time for three days and nights the first time he was away. That was two years ago. I'm not so much of a baby anymore."

"That's good." What else could I have said?

She turned a page in the book I'd given her to look at. Rascal, by Sterling North. I chose it, not because I supposed she could read well enough for it as yet, but it was a special edition with lots of cute pictures of raccoons, and at least she could look at those. It was actually my brother George's assigned reading, for a unit called _The Twentieth Century in the Pre-Electronic Period_. He was fourteen. She'd been looking at it for almost an hour. I didn't dream the art could've held her interest that long.

George came in. "Where's that book?"

"She's looking at it," I told him.

"Well, I need it. If I don't get halfway through it by Saturday, I can't go to the arena." He leaned over her and reached for it.

"Oh, please, I'm almost done," she pleaded. "Five more minutes. He's finished making the canoe, and I think he has to say good-bye to Rascal."

That got my full attention. "Have you been _reading_ all this time?"

"Yes. It's a really really good book. I'm going to ask my dad to get it for me. Thank you so much—," she said to me, and to George, "and thank you, too. Please, _please_, please can't I finish it? Pleeeezzee?"

"She hasn't been reading it," he said with disbelief. "Not and almost finished it in an hour. How old is she, anyway?"

"Have you read it before?" I asked her.

"Nope. Never. And I'm seven," she replied, devouring lines and paragraphs with her eyes as she spoke.

"You're shitting me," said George.

She jumped up and dropped the book. "You said the 'S'-word," she cried in loud tones of horrified delight.

Both care-providers looked over at us. Primavera pointed at George. "He said the 'S'-word," she repeated.

"George, please watch your language," admonished Nina, our own care-provider. "Sorry," she said to Primavera's child-minder.

"Did he put you up to making like you read it?" asked George, as the two women returned to their conversation.

"No," she answered, darkly.

"Prove it," challenged George.

I picked up Rascal, and opened it to the crease where he had let it sit on its face for three weeks. "Could you read this out loud, please?" I handed it to her.

She said, "Certainly," with great dignity, and began: "He allowed me to live my own life, keep pet skunks…." She read fluently and easily to the break in the page. She had read it, all right.

"Another _brain_," said George with disgust. "You two even have the same damn look on your faces. You can finish it. There's no point in me reading it now." We ignored him.

"What do you like best about it?" I asked her. I was curious; how deep was her understanding?

"Rascal, of course. And that it was all real. I wish kids could still go all over the place safely, and that there were more woods, and water you could just drink out of creeks. The way people used to live. I liked that." Pretty—no, _very_ sophisticated, considering. She was only seven.

"Would you mind trying to read some of this?" I handed her my book.

"The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli." She pronounced the name correctly. Well, her name was Primavera Visconti. She was of Italian descent, whether born or adopted. "Niccolo Piccolo." She liked the sound of the rhyme, and repeated it. "Niccolo Piccolo. Is it a fairytale?" she asked.

"No. It's not fiction."

She took it and read from the page I was on. "—One can be hated as much for good deeds as for bad—." She stopped at the end of the sentence, and looked at me with distress. "I know all the words, but I don't understand the sentence. I didn't know that you could—not understand if you knew the words."

"That's okay. It's a tough book. I only read it first a few months ago, myself. You'll understand it when you get older."

"Oh. How old were you?"

"Not quite thirteen."

"Okay." She went back to reading Rascal.

"Looks like you have a girlfriend, Richard," jeered George. "Maybe you can get her to—," and he suggested something obscene.

She turned her face up to look into his. "Just because I'm six doesn't mean I'm _ig_norant. He wouldn't make or ask me to do that, because he's _not_ a slimy pervert, _and _if I met somebody who _was_, I'd scream until his ears bled. Like _this._" She jumped up, threw her head back, and let out a sound of nearly superhuman pitch and volume.

It brought both care-providers down on us. George made his escape, Primavera was swept off to the bathroom, and I took the opportunity to talk to Nina.

"Do you know whether her care-provider has been looking after her long?" I asked her.

"Over two years. Mister Visconti's not married right now, so he wants her to have the same people around as long as possible, for stability."

"Do they know why she has panic attacks when her father's away? And how old is she, six or seven? She's claimed both."

"She's a plague orphan. She has a fear of abandonment, and her records were lost in all the disorder, so they had to approximate her age. There are thousands like her. She's lucky. She's alive, and she's adopted."

"It's strange talking to her. I don't know whether to talk to her intellect or her age."

"Hon—a lot of people feel the same way about _you. _You're doing all the right things. She loves to read. And talk. Just take her as she is. It'll be okay."

She came back and sat down to finish Rascal.

I looked around for my book. It wasn't on the sofa, or the table, or even in the room. George had pulled one of his favorite tricks again. He had taken it when he left, and he had undoubtedly put it in a place where retrieving it would be taxing and painful for me. At the top of the third floor stairs, probably. Climbing one flight of stairs made my heart pound and my head swim. Climbing two could, and sometimes did, make me pass out. I felt a spasm of anger. Then I looked at her.

"Primavera?"

"Uh-huh?"

"Could you do something for me, please? Can you run quick up those stairs, and then up the next flight, and see if my book's up there? And bring it back if it is?"

"Sure!" She jumped up and was all the way up the first flight before her care-provider noticed. In seconds, she reappeared, and ended by leaping from the bend in the stairs to the floor, shaking the room when she landed. She grinned at our worried faces, and gave me the book. Then she went back to her seat.

I didn't know why, but there wasn't that distance between her and myself that was always there with other kids. Maybe it was because I was so much older that I seemed more like an adult than a peer. Maybe she had really good manners. Maybe it was because she wasn't brought up Imagist, or because she was so intelligent.

She didn't care that I was funny-looking.

I was intrigued by that. Also, here was the first kid I had come across who could read anything like as well as I did, once I allowed for the age difference. Now that I knew what her reading skills were like, there were a lot of other books I could have given her to keep her busy, but it seemed like talking with her would be much more interesting. So that was what I did, once she finished the book.

Talking to a child so young, however intelligent, wasn't something I was at all familiar with. It proved easier than I thought. She wanted to play, and for her that meant pretending. We made up a story together, and acted out the events. She set us out in the woods of centuries before, surviving off the land, surrounded by animals, beset with dangers. It wasn't sophisticated, but it was fun. A table with an old sheet over it became our shelter inside a hollow tree.

God, but she was an _active _child! Jumping up and running around, leaping over things and crawling under others. Her jacket became, in turn, a net for fishing, a blanket for sleeping, a bandage for make-believe injuries, a carry-sack, a pair of wings—I got almost as wrapped up in play as she did. It would have been fun to be able to do that when I was her age.

When the jacket became wings, she climbed up onto the back of an armchair, and the whole business tipped over and crashed into a houseplant. Everything hit the floor, spilling dirt, and little girl, blood, and tears, all over. The care-providers swooped in again, and after a quick clean-up, the only damage was a ripped jacket sleeve, a knocked-out baby tooth that had been loose anyway, and a few broken palm fronds.

That tumble scared the shit out of me! When she and the chair were toppling, the thought that flashed through my head was—_don't let her be ruined!_ I couldn't get there in time to catch her.

In so short a time, I had come to care enough for her to be afraid for her. And based on what? A few words? That she'd run up some stairs for me?

Then she wanted to find her tooth for the tooth fairy, and though the sweepings were carefully searched, they couldn't find it. They concluded that she had probably swallowed it. Wrong. It was in my pocket.

I still have it, that little nubbin of ivory with a core of garnet-brown blood. A souvenir. What does The Golden Bough say about sympathetic magic, that something that was once part of a person is always part of them?

Her care-provider decided that Primavera should calm down, have a snack, and then do something quieter for the rest of the afternoon. I settled down with The Prince again, and I was deeply engrossed when she finished eating and came over to sit down with another book. On the sofa. Right next to me.

I was leaning on the right arm of the sofa, on my right side of course, leaving my unhappy left side, the deformed side, vulnerable and open. She dove violently onto the sofa, like a guided missile, and I had a brief moment of terror, knowing how bad it would hurt if she were to crash into me—but instead she snuggled in against me as lightly and gently as a butterfly landing on a flower. It was an action without hesitation, self-consciousness, or reserve.

I came near to crying when she did that. It was so _nice_. She smelled of baby shampoo and peanut butter, and she was so warm and solid….

My life had not held many moments like that, moments of unstudied, spontaneous closeness and physical contact. My mother only showed me any signs of affection when there was a camera pointed at us. Yes, the care-providers dispensed hugs as they did their duties, but it was part of their job, they were trained and paid to do it, and I knew that from a very early age.

And here was this little girl, happily cuddled up against my bad side, with no ulterior motives. Just because she liked me, because she wanted to be close to me.

I was frozen in place. I didn't dare move. I didn't want it to end.

There was nothing overtly sexual about it. This wasn't about sex. I wasn't anything like sexually mature, let alone Primavera. Nor would I have ever done anything to hurt her or frighten her, I didn't want to change and ruin how everything was, right then….but with a sickening ache in my gut, I could suddenly understand molestation, understand how someone, starved for friendly contact, could misinterpret a child's actions, and go too far. I did not want to think about anyone hurting this child.

I don't know how long we sat that way. Not long enough for me. Every now and then, she'd look up from her book and smile at me. She was even cuter with a gap where that tooth had been.

Any hope I had that her father—and therefore, she, too—might become a regular visitor was squashed when that afternoon came to a close. When he came to collect her, accompanied by my parents, the mood was tense and unfriendly.

She saw him, gasped out "Daddy!" and flew into his arms. Her face lit up like

seventeen Christmas trees when he came into the room. I looked at him. He wasn't a young man. He was balding, and a little overweight. Not handsome, not godlike. Just a man. But his smile changed his face... So. That was what love looked like. He picked her up and hugged her, and she told him all about her day, showing him where she'd lost her tooth, and then they left.

She didn't say good-bye to me. That showed how important I was. Then she ran back in a moment later.

"Goodbyerichardihadalovelyday." No pauses between the words. Obviously, she'd been reminded about her manners. She ran out again.

And then ran back in again. "I almost forgot. I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up. When I am, you should come see me, and I'll do all your operations on you, I promise. Good-bye." She jumped, got a stranglehold around my neck—fortunately, from the right side—and kissed me on the cheek. Then she was gone.

I didn't see her again until fifteen years later. By that time, we were both completely different people.

--Please focus on the blue dot as your digital image is taken.--

I sat up straight–as straight as I could—and followed the instruction.

So much for the kindness and tolerance of humanity, one little girl aside. I was at college and it seemed like it was going to be unfriendly.

I hadn't even asked to visit any campuses. I had just chosen the most challenging school from those that had accepted me, the one that was hardest to get into. And why?

Out of pride. To show my parents, to say, _See! Even if I'm not athletic, not handsome, not popular, not **normal**, I **can** do something. I** am** something._ What a waste of effort.

What I should have done, I realized, was visit all the college campuses, or, better yet, looked for schools with higher percentages of very young students. And schools that were accustomed to accommodating those who were _different. _I could have found the school that would be the best environment for me.

Maybe it wasn't too late. I could go back and look at other colleges. I _was _still only thirteen, after all. Surely they'd understand—they might even be relieved!—if I changed my mind, even now…

Then I heard my mother say, "Edward has definite leadership qualities, and we want to see him develop them to the fullest. He could very well become the Executive Director of A.L.-Bion one day. The Genet-Yorks are one of the Directorship families—my husband holds our vote now, but Edward will have it some day. We're going to put everything behind him, when the time comes." Sincerity rang out in her voice.

Edward?

Edward had definite leadership qualities?

Edward as executive director of A.L.-Bion?

Ed only went to class when he needed to get some sleep! Ed had spent three days in the hospital during his freshman year because he'd been drinking way too much. Ed did things like impregnate a visiting exchange student, when he was only sixteen and she was nineteen. The result was my nephew Stephen and an expensive paternity suit.

Edward's life was all about having fun, and his so-called 'definite leadership qualities' consisted of being the most-fun guy around. He would make a lousy CEO. He hated to work.

I was the serious one, the studious one, the one who worked hard.

If they were to put everything behind _me_…

If they were to put _anything_ behind me…

They owed me! They'd let their faith come before any consideration of my health and happiness, surely I had _something _coming to me.

Everything for Edward, and if anything was left, it would undoubtedly go to George.

Nothing would be left for me.

Well. Fine! I didn't need them. I knew what I would do, what I had to do.

I would become Executive Director of A.L.-Bion.

I didn't know exactly how, but it would take years. I was just starting college, after all. The details would fill themselves in along the way. I would do whatever I had to, and I was in the ideal place to start.

All my doubts, all my concerns and fears evaporated with a hiss, as if my brain was a hot skillet and my wavering a drop of water.

It did not matter if people accepted me or not. It did not matter if I weren't comfortable or happy or content. It did not matter if there was not one human being on the earth with whom I felt any connection…

Wanting things like that was a terrible weakness.

That was a long time ago. Twenty-two years passed, and never, not even for one single day, one waking hour, did I lose sight of that goal.

Yesterday, that dream died forever. Theodore Richmond-Stanley became the Executive Director of A.L.-Bion…

I can't just let go of it silently.

I have to get all of it out, the whole story, and looking over what I put down already, I think I've made a good start.

A/N: Oh, no! Not another fic! Relax, this one is A): already finished, and B) shorter. I hope perhaps to sell this one in the mainstream real world, but I am aware that it needs help. Any you can offer would be most welcome.

Also, if by chance you read my Doom fics--this is Robert Angevin...


	2. Part Two: Fighting my way out

**Part Two: Fighting My Way Out**

That's a pretty decent picture of the kid I was, and my family as it was. Third and youngest in an affluent family which belonged to the Imagist faith.

For those unfamiliar with the precepts of the Church of God's Image, among the usual stuff is the tenet that humans are made in God's image. Whoever you are, you are an aspect of God, and therefore holy. It's not bad, as beliefs go. All-inclusive, on the surface of it. But the sting in the tail of this faith is that any unnatural alteration is wrong and sinful. God's image shall not be degraded! That means, in practical terms, that cosmetics and hair-dye are forbidden, intoxicants and mind-altering substances are out—even medications for mental conditions like depression and schizophrenia.

Genetic modification is a crime, cosmetic surgery is evil, blood transfusions are an abomination—and surgery is sinful. Not even for life-threatening illnesses will an Imagist allow the touch of a medical laser. If they're in an accident, that's a different story. They'll let a doctor patch them up—as long as they don't need any replacement parts or a top-up on the ol' body fluids. And they mean it, just like any martyrs throughout history. The League for the Defense of The Rights of Minors makes sure that the children of these deluded Luddites are not denied treatment for any life-threatening conditions, although…. that I'll get into later.

At one time, when that sudden drop in the cost of cosmetic surgery caused a huge trend in self-modification, the results of cloning all still had progeria, and people were afraid that genetic engineering would produce a super-race against which mere mortals could not compete, I'm sure the Church of God's Image was a great comfort. But that was two hundred and fifty years ago!

It's all very well for people like my mother and father to believe in that. Mother is a natural beauty. Marvelous bone structure. Even at her age, she needs little enhancement, but she does use a dusting of face-powder, 'to keep the shine down.'

Father was a professional long-distance runner before he took over the York Directorship, and he was voted one of the Most Beautiful People five times during his prime. My brothers favor him. I was not like any of them. I was alone.

My usual contacts with other children were unpleasant. Girls, especially. I mentioned that we were affluent; therefore my parents hired people to do the actual childrearing. Those two dozen or so care-providers, mostly women, who came and went throughout my childhood are probably the reason I didn't become an out-and-out sociopath. No, really. I didn't. I became more of an occasional sociopath, instead. They were kind and caring, even loving—but they were hired and paid and fired.

I was home-schooled. So were my brothers, until they were ready for high school. I didn't go to high school. I realized at a very tender age that early matriculation would be my fastest and best way out. I was eight, then and from that time, I poured my life into learning—everything.

Being home-schooled didn't make things much easier. It wasn't as if our parents did the schooling; there was a group of children with whom we shared professional teachers. It was more like a very exclusive private school taught in our houses. The children in our circle were all from families who shared my parents' faith and socio-political standards. They had money, too.

There were eight or nine of them, half boys, half girls. The boys were crude and obvious. Unable to bully me with the conventional method of fists—after all, they couldn't hit a cripple— they turned to words. I absorbed their verbal blows and returned them with more imaginative and barbed retorts. But the girls were different.

There were four of them. Two sisters, Isabelle and Daenne Neville, then there was Kirby Ingram, and Rejoice Stanley. Rejoice died young, murder-suicide at age fourteen, with a stranger she met cliking. Collectively, humanity isn't getting any brighter. The girls cut me into pieces, just because they could. I didn't know how to defend myself then. I was vulnerable to the girls because I wanted to love and be loved. Everyone does. The desire for the exchange of love is in humans as the tendency to grow toward the source of light is in flowers, a matter of instinct, not of free will.

My ex-wife has accused me of being a 'heartless, lying user', and a 'vicious, oversexed spider.' That is not true, although she had a point, as I was lying to her and using her, but she was a special case. Actually, I've always been very much a romantic. Girls and women have always been mysterious, wonderful, distant creatures—as long as they're distant. Up close, they seem to bestow affection only when they have something to gain from it, like my mother, or in an impersonal way as part of their job, like the many care professionals, nurses and doctors who've done their work on me and moved on to the next patient.

There are exceptions, of course, and when I have met with genuine, spontaneous caring matched with the kind of mind that shares my sense of humor, I have formed deep and lasting emotional attachments.

When I first made my plan to get into college as soon as possible, I was already ahead of George, partly due to greater intelligence, and partly due to my enforced physical inactivity. I pulled even farther ahead. It didn't hurt that George has a serious neurohormone imbalance, one that interferes with his concentration and decision making abilities. Again, because of their Imagism, our parents didn't have him treated for it. I've got a neurohormone imbalance, too, but in my case, oddly enough, it's an advantage. I can focus like a laser on something I'm interested in, to the point of obsession, learn about it, and remember it in microscopic detail.

I soon needed an individual tutor, partly to keep me from answering every question asked. My relationship with my parents was very good at that time; I got high marks and behaved myself. What more could two parents, who were always off running around, want of their youngest child? It wasn't until I was thirteen that I drew their serious, undivided attention. That was _how_ I got to college, where I began this story.

It was only a little while after that day with Primavera that everything came to a head. I was applying to various schools that year. Secretly, of course. I didn't let them in on what I was planning. Some of the applications should have been filled out by my parents. Those I forged, using their electronic signatures. I, in my mother's name, wrote very moving letters about how sincere my desire to attend x----fill in the blank college was, and how I would need accommodations for my disabilities, and wasn't there a grant I could apply for? And because of this-that-the-other thing, I would be living on or near the campus with a care provider who would be acting as my guardian. Did they know of any place which would be suitable, on the first floor or with an elevator, complying with all the various Accessibility acts? Mom could have been proud of them. They were as good as, or better than, the ones she would have written.

Eventually, though, I needed one of my actual parents to show up and sign documents and talk to the college officials. I waited until I had five acceptances and five comprehensive scholarship subsidies to go with them. Between my academic qualifications and my disabilities, everything was covered financially, and I wouldn't have to take out a loan or depend on anyone. I didn't want to be supported by my parents. I had all I needed. I was ready to go to college.

Provided, of course, that I got their permission. I waited until the right moment to break the news, a moment which came when we were having one of our rare family dinners. Months often went by before we would have another of them. That night, Mom was home from legislating, Dad was back from hosting the Olympics, and Edward was home from college.

We were having eight-treasure eggplant over rice. All our meals together were designed to be eaten with only one utensil, so that I wouldn't have to struggle with a knife and fork in my clumsy, one-handed way. Edward finished his account of a spring break trip he took somewhere, when I seized on that as my opener.

"I've been giving some thought about which college I should go to," I said, as casually as I could.

"Reed," said my mother, naming our local liberal arts school—not one of the better schools, and not one which I bothered to apply to. "And clik-commute." Meaning that it would be easiest and most convenient for her if I went somewhere close to home. I would not be permitted to run around loose, frightening small children and making her look bad.

"It is rather early for you to be thinking about that." Fatherly wisdom from the other end of the table.

"No," I pretended nonchalance. "I ought to let them all know by next month, it's only considerate."

Mom put down her glass. "What?"

"They may need to make alterations to accommodate me, after all," I said, as lightly as I could, and took another forkful of eggplant.

"They wouldn't need four years for that," said Dad, and stopped, having caught the sudden lion-has-padded-into-view tension that had fallen over my mother and me. It set off a hot, stinging, droning ache in my head. She and I were engaged in our first stare-down. We might still have been sitting there, mute, the next morning, but George broke in.

"You can't go to college. You're younger than I am."

"What do you mean?" asked my mother.

"I'm starting this fall. I won't live in a dorm and can't live on my own, but there are full-service apartments for the handicapped."

"This isn't happening," she said, blankly.

"And since you'd be paying for care providers for me anyway, they could act in loco parentis there just as they do here. I have a full scholarship package, whichever offer I go with—." I continued.

"I do not believe it."

"—be taking the basic pre-professional courses for the first year." I was going to continue until I was through. If I stopped, I might not have been able to start again.

"No, it's….This is too much."

"All I need is your permission. And you'd need to talk to admissions people, things like that. It's not unusual anymore, that I'd be so young, since so many parents are having their children's genes optimized before implantation. Twenty-three percent of all entering students are sixteen or younger. Seven percent are under fifteen."

"It is out of the question."

"I'm going to college this fall. I need your permission. If you don't give it willingly, I have already spoken with an advocate from the League for the Defense of The Rights of Minors and another from an organization for the rights of the disabled. They have confirmed that I have grounds for a legal emancipation, involving the termination of all parental rights—."

"On what grounds!" she cried.

"On the grounds that anyone who would condemn their child to disability and deformity has such lousy judgment that they can't possibly tell what's in his best interest, let alone act in it. I would also bring a lawsuit for enough money to cover all the corrective surgery I could ever want, plus damages for all my pain and suffering. It's not a hollow threat. They're waiting to hear how you reacted."

"You do not sound like my son. You don't even sound like a kid! You're thirteen. There you sit, and come down on us with—threats and ultimatums—like you're my political opponent! Where are you getting this from?"

"Machiavelli. I read him last year."

"Mach--! Is that how long you've been planning this?"

"No. I've been planning it for the last five years. Ever since you began talking about Edward's college plans, and I realized that going to college could mean getting out of here."

"Eight. You were eight. It's—."

"Grotesque? Monstrous?"

Round two of silent staring. She caved.

"For so many years, you've been good. I've followed all your progress reports. You have an incredible brain, Richard. I truly believe you can do anything and everything—."

"No. I can't do everything. I can't run in a marathon, or play a piano. I can't ask a girl to the digitals. Oh, theoretically, I suppose I could, but the thought of her reaction wakes me up at night in a cold sweat. And I haven't been _good!_ I've just been well-behaved." I may have sounded cool, but I was shaking.

We were on round three of the stare-down. The Greek Chorus, meaning Dad, Edward and George, took the silence as their cue. George said, "If he's going to college, I'm going, too. Why are they giving him a scholarship, anyway? He can't play sports!"

That was my second favorite line from the whole evening.

"This is humiliating. Edward is twenty-three, and he's nowhere near graduating!" added Dad. That was my favorite line.

"I have more than half my credits! Anyway, he has nothing to do _but_ read," protested Ed.

I snapped at him. "So studying is secondary to hanging out and getting laid, to you? I'll sweeten the deal, Mom. I'll use a different last name, and you can tell the administration that it's to keep enemies from targeting me. Your permission. That's all I really need. I'll attend summer sessions, too, and only come home for breaks. When I do, I'll be well behaved, I promise you that. And good grades, too, of course."

She was pale. She was trembling. I felt a great rush of pleasure, seeing that. This was power, and it tasted like lemon curd, sweet and painful at the same time.

They gave their permission, partly on the advice of their lawyers. I even got a living allowance, most of which I put in the bank and later invested. I had a succession of care providers, paid for by my parents, until I turned eighteen and decided I could live independently. I managed no worse than most eighteen-year-olds. I did smell fairly rancid for a few weeks, until I got myself together on stuff like laundry.

I went home for my breaks until I turned twenty-one.

Just to show there were no hard feelings.

That's a joke, by the way.

While I was home that last time, Mother sorrowfully asked, "What aspect of God _are_ you?" It was intended to be rhetorical, but I had an answer.

"When two sports teams face off in the finals, and the winning team gets emotional for the cameras, and say, "God heard us. God was with us," I'm the aspect of God that hated the other team, and didn't hear their prayers. When there's a disaster, and the survivors say, "God had his angels looking out for me. God spared me for a reason," I'm the face of God that looked away from all those who died, the aspect of God who had no reason to spare all the other poor bastards. When a little girl gets kidnapped, violated and murdered, I'm the part of God that let it happen. When there's a war, I'm the double-agent, double-crossing God who's on both sides. I am an angry, ugly, bitter laugh at everything there is. Good-bye, Mom."

Not a bad exit line, huh? I had it all thought out. I worked on it over the years. But at that moment, the perfect moment, I choked on it. I muttered, "I don't know," and left.

Slunk away, actually.

Wanting to be loved is a terrible craving. It's an addiction that gnaws.

From age thirteen to age twenty-one, I was in college, getting various degrees, in law, among other things. I spent the time between twenty-one and oh, say seven years ago, making money. I needed a lot of it. I needed enough to get all the corrective surgery done, plus enough to live on while I did, and then a nice sum for my future endeavors. I had plans.

Why didn't I sue my parents for the money? Because….I forgave them.

Another joke.

They were expecting me to sue. In their encrypted files I found all sorts of panicky correspondence to and from their lawyers, who were advising them to settle out of court the moment I mentioned it. Father even anticipated a possible tell-all book, and wanted to know how to block it. How trite they thought me. How unimaginative. Therefore, I didn't.

I will skip over the details of my money-making endeavors. They were successful, and not relevant to this story.

When I judged that I would soon have enough, I began looking for a doctor to head the massive project of making me into a normal physical specimen. I had very specific criteria. I wanted an XD, a physician with a comprehensive medical degree which qualified him or her to diagnose and treat practically anything in the animal kingdom, someone who could doctor an entire ecosphere. He or she would be surgeon, physician, geneticist, and psychiatrist, all in one, backed by lesser votaries of those orders. And I wanted a recent graduate, someone who knew all the newest treatments and technologies, someone green, someone who wasn't yet hardened and practical.

Someone I could play like a harp, in other words. I knew what I wanted done, and I had an idea of what was going to be in store for me. I wanted a doctor who didn't have the face to say "No, I can't do that," when I said I wanted to be two meters tall, with the sexual capacity of a lion in mating season. You should look up what a male lion normally does at those times. Awe-inspiring.

I also wanted the pick of the litter. 99.9th percentile of all XD's graduating that year, world-wide, those were the ones I was combing through, when I came across a name I knew. Primavera Visconti.

**_Doctor_** Primavera Visconti, the adopted daughter of Hugo Visconti. Doctor Primavera Visconti, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize for medicine this year, and so young, too. Not even thirty. How many people go on to become what they said they would when they were six? She had. She really did become a doctor.

I'd have a power over her that I could have over no other.

Not that the memory of that afternoon would have influenced me, had she become only an MD or an indifferently good XD, but since she had such high grades, and was on my short list, I grinned like a shark, and planned our reunion.

She had just received her license, and was all lined up to join an ecological engineering team that was headed for Africa. It was one of those career-making opportunities, as the next step after that was promotion to the Mars Project. Then the word came down that she was bumped. I was in no way responsible. It was because her father was famous and powerful. They said it would look like nepotism and influence. Next time, they said. It was an opponent of her father's, getting a jab in at him through her. All the typical bullshit they say in such cases.

She was blocked from the next eco-engineering project as well, the one to Alaska, but she was on the waiting list for the one after that—five years in the future.

So she went back to the university hospital and began a contributory residency, volunteering her services for those with only the bare basic citizen's coverage. Very commendable of her. She has a social conscience. Of course she comes from wealth, so she could afford to do it, but I still think it showed her heart was in the right place, don't you agree?

I gave her a few months in which to get thoroughly bored—a mere medical residency wouldn't be a challenge for an XD—before I made my move.

One cold, wet afternoon, I limped into the waiting room for emergencies and walk-ins, and asked to see her. I knew she was going to be there, of course. I leave as little to chance as I can. I was determined to wait and not go away until she came out and saw me. It didn't take as long as I thought it would; only half an hour. I stood up. I am always gentlemanly. Or almost always. Or I am when it suits my humor and purpose.

I stood up and greeted her, my soul naked in my eyes. "Doctor Visconti, I don't think you could possibly remember me, but many years ago, when we were both children—."

She interrupted. "I remember you, Richard Genet-York. I remember you very well."

And I knew I had a doctor. However, things did not go quite as I planned them.

She didn't have an office. We sat in a staff rest area, and she brewed tea for us, bringing out some home-made cookies. We made small talk while she got everything ready. She told me about the ecological engineering, and I sympathized with her. The cookies were lemon-cardamom, with raisins in them. It was very nice and cozy.

I took a moment to look her over before I went into my pitch.

She was almost certainly the result of successful genetic optimization. She had turned out so tall that I glanced at her feet to see if she had on platforms. She was wearing flats. A woman with the name of Primavera should have hair like one of Botticelli's goddesses, and she did, dark red-gold, bound back in a braid. She had good skin, but her features were otherwise almost ordinary.

There was one very important thing about her face—it was _her _own face. I am the last person who would look down on somebody else for having work done on themselves, but I don't like completely fake faces. I hate to see Audrey Hepburn reincarnated through surgery, or those 'ideal beauty' computer composites made flesh. I keep wondering who that person really is. If Primavera had had any cosmetic surgery, it was undetectable. That pleased me. She had enough confidence to wear the face she was born with.

I knew from her transcripts that she had started college in her early teens. Between that and her grades, I should have known she was going to be very intelligent, but I had grown accustomed to being the smarter person in any given conversation. It was a blind spot.

She stole my opening. "I know why you're here. You want me to fix you."

"Yes."

"The ink on my license is still wet enough to smear."

"I see that as a plus. Everything is still fresh in your memory, and you are up-to-date on the newest developments. Also, you still haven't seen…." I paused. "The limits of what can be done. I am beginning this late. It should have been done before I stopped growing. It should have been done before I was six. The result won't be as good as it could have been, and I won't recover as swiftly or as easily."

"True. Do you have, or can you get, the funding?"

"I have it."

"It will be excruciating. It will be much worse than you imagine."

"I understand."

"The degree of success will depend on your degree of commitment. You will have to work for it, just as surely as I will. Physical therapy cannot be done for you, bought for you, or faked by you. Nor can you disregard the warnings and restrictions I give you."

"I will do what I must."

"Then tell me what you want."

"I want a straight back. I want…." I began and went on for some time. She took notes on a Powermod and asked a question now and then. Her co-workers looked in from time to time, to see if she needed rescuing from the frothing madman, but she waved them away. I was worked up by the recitation of my heart's desire, and at one point, I had to get up to limp up and down the room. I told her about everything, what I wanted and what I could live with, in great and graphic detail.

Why I would be so candid? She was going to be my doctor. Besides, the care professionals I've known have almost all been very sincere and dedicated. Much less screwed up than my family.

When I had done ranting and she had done taking notes, I sat down, winded. She read over what she wrote down, read over my medical files, and looked at me.

"Essentially, you are asking to be normal."

"Yes. I will settle for being normal."

"If you have enough done to you to make you look and function within the human norm, you will, and I am fairly certain of this, have had more corrective surgery and treatment than has ever yet been performed on an adult who hasn't been in an accident. I'm not including purely cosmetic surgery. Most corrective measures were developed either for children or accident victims. This will be a problem. We won't be trying to repair fresh injuries; instead we will be cutting, shaping, and removing abnormally formed, but essentially healthy, bone and tissue. Counter-intuitive. We'll be inflicting the damage.

"There are special ossified polymers developed to replace bones, if it should be needed, but not on such a scale…Your ribcage will be the worst part of that. A few vertebrae can be replaced, there are regenerative treatments for the nerve fibers of the spinal cord and elsewhere, but as yet, there is no truly satisfactory replacement for cartilage. If your back is to be remade, one will have to be found. That will take time. While you're waiting, I would recommend that you put on forty kilos of lean muscle mass. Your muscles will atrophy while you're immobile, and as you are now, you can't afford to lose any more. I will have to have a contract."

I had one with me. She read it. "This clause prevents you from firing me."

"I have an impulsive and unpleasant temper at times. I will have dark and angry moods. The clause is there to protect me from myself."

"Yet I can resign. Conceivably, you could make yourself so unpleasant that I would quit. But I suppose I have been warned."

"I'm not worried about that. You made me a promise, a beautiful promise, that afternoon. That day is one of the most valued memories I have. It's like a bright yellow butterfly—."

"Humanely snuffed out in a killing jar, or collected after a long and happy life, meeting its end from natural causes, before being pinned on a board with a specimen card?" Her glance flicked around the ceiling before coming to rest on my face.

"I would say, rather, alive in my memory. It wasn't out of sentiment that I chose to come to you for this, I'm not that much of a fool, but since you—."

She was playing an imaginary violin. She stopped, and said, "You will have to forgive me. I am one of the world's worst smart-asses. When I come across another of my tribe, I can't help but break into our native tongue."

That set the tone for the next several years.

That was how it began.

I'm not sure how much to include about my actual treatment and hospital stay. That would take too long. I'll just recount a few of the more significant or amusing details.

For example, after I'd been following an exercise and diet program to build up my meager muscle tone, and had put on twenty-six kilos, Dr. Visconti had looked at me with a 'tough chess problem' expression on her face, and said, "When I told you to put on forty kilos of lean muscle, I didn't expect you to actually do it."

"Then why tell me to?"

"I hoped you would put on at least twenty. Most patients are not as dedicated as you are."

"This is important to me. This is one of my major life goals."

"I can see this. If I tell you what I really expect of you, will you just do it without slacking off or killing yourself with overwork?"

"I think I could about manage that, yes."

"If you can, you'll be the most remarkable patient in my admittedly limited experience. Not that you weren't already."

Then there was the spine and brain surgery, for which I had to remain conscious, with only local anesthesia. There was more than one operation, and they tended to be long and boring from my point of view. To shut me up and keep me entertained, someone was assigned to play gin rummy with me while Dr. Visconti directed nano-manipulators in threading invisibly thin fibers through my grey matter.

Somewhere in that first year, Primavera Visconti and I became friends.

In more than four years as my physician, and thousands of hours spent in my company, I never made her flinch at anything I did or said. Or made her fed up with me, or revolted. Then again, I had never grabbed her crotch or flung feces around, so I hadn't really pushed it to the limits. I had cursed her, sworn at her and reviled her, mocked her and thrown things, and she replied in kind. Once, when I threw a cup of juice at the wall, she responded by throwing my bedside pitcher at the ceiling, showering the room with ice water.

By the time my transformation was through, I would have unhesitatingly named her my best friend. It had been a long process—the transformation and the friendship both.

Hugo Visconti came to see me in the hospital, about two and a half years into my treatment. He was in his nineties then. I think he wanted to see the patient/project that was taking up so much of his daughter's time, attention, and conversation. I found I liked him. He is—was— one of the most intelligent people I've ever known. He was not the father of Primavera's physical being, but he was certainly the father of her intellect and her character. He said something very significant about their relationship while we were talking.

"I could not be prouder of her. Most people would attach 'if she were my own flesh and blood'. I do not. To add such a qualifier as that belies the statement even as it leaves the lips." He paused. "I could not possibly be prouder of her."

I believed him.

I wish I had such a mentor in my youth. I'm glad she had him.

She was devastated when he died.

It was about a year later. I was in a mobility chair then, recovering from the work on my legs, the last major part of my rebuilding. She came in not long after she got the news. Her grief was terrifying. It was immense. She was silent, distant, and dead-eyed. She could not eat or sleep or cry.

I was afraid she would wind up dead out of careless apathy. That would not have suited me at all, so I appointed myself her caregiver. I made the travel arrangements, went along, saw that she got to, through, and back from the funeral. I prodded her into looking after herself.

It was one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do. I felt helpless and clueless—and I loathe feeling like that. My father had died, but he had not been half so dear to me as Hugo Visconti was to her. I didn't know what to say or do in the face of such tremendous suffering. So I asked myself what I would say or do under the circumstances if I were doing it with an ulterior motive, or as a duty and obligation. I found I knew what needed to be said and done, and then I found I could actually do what I ought to while feeling what I should, feeling concerned and caring about a friend.

I didn't realize it at the time, but it was important, it was really good that I could do that, that I could be genuine, even if it took some effort. It saved our friendship later, under other trying circumstances.

Remaking me took almost exactly five years. The results were better than could have reasonably been expected, with the negative factors that worked against them. I can go to swimming pools now; people think I was in a not-too-serious accident.

It's funny, but it took a while before I realized that I really was different.

I was riding home on the Transit one night that last year of treatment. No new work was being done, but I was being monitored in case something went catastrophically wrong. Nothing did. I had been to a museum, bought an exhibition catalog, and was reading it. I glanced up for some reason and saw _him_ down at the other end of the train car.

A movement he'd made had caught my attention. He looked like me, at least superficially. His hair and skin were a few shades darker than mine, and he was a little shorter than average. The expression on his face was intelligent and intense. That was where the resemblance ended. He was young—just a kid, really— and good-looking, and he looked like he was in decent physical condition. Describing my impression of him takes a lot longer than forming it did. It took only a moment's glance.

He was the sort of person I had always wanted to be. Lucky him. I felt a stab of envy and resentment. There was an itch at my hairline, and as I reached up to scratch it, he reached up, too…

I was looking at my own reflection.

I was looking at _myself_. The dark mirror panel at the other end of the car was unexpected. It had fooled me.

I closed my book, got up and slowly walked down the aisle to see my reflection up close.

I was now the person I wanted to be.

Yes, this was my goal, my dreamed-of outcome, the result of all my pain and all the sweat and blood I'd shed and bled. I had observed every stage I'd passed through, but somehow it hadn't registered, not even when I stood naked in front of my mirror, or looked at digitals with Dr. Visconti.

I walked closer still. Three years of surgery, medication, braces, splints, casts, physical therapy. I had suffered agony every hour. My heart and lungs were replaced by artificials, on the advice of my physician. She has artificial lungs herself—quite a story, but not mine to tell. They're better. Superior O2/CO2 exchange, won't absorb toxins, immune to carcinogens, able to take in oxygen in conditions which would defeat meat lungs—and this heart will probably go on beating long after I'm dead.

The cartilage problem was solved; I was told that salamanders were involved somehow. I didn't want the details. I wore a series of neck and torso braces for a year and a half, to retrain my body into its new shape. I still wear one at night. I gained eighteen centimeters of height from the work on my spine alone. Part of the time, I lived in a pressurized chamber, based on those used for deep sea workers. That was to help me put on muscle without undue exertion. The pressure was increased gradually, so I got used to it. I'm built pretty solid now; a side benefit. I'm stronger than I look.

I gained another ten centimeters of height when it came time for my leg to be lengthened. Primavera and I fought over what was going to be done. She just wanted to make the left match the right; I wanted both of them to be let out. She said it was unnecessary, and I was enduring excessive trauma as it was. I said I was the best judge of that, and after a lot of spit flying—we were both screaming, at one point—she broke both my legs.

Which was what I wanted. It was the first step toward making them longer. We compromised on ten centimeters. She warned me that I might never walk normally. But I do. Better than by my former standard, at least. I still, and will always, limp. And I'm 170 centimeters tall now. I will never reach my brothers' height. I can live with that.

Then I'd spent a year as an outpatient, having smaller surgeries, adjustments, more therapy. I felt better. The pain subsided to the level I had lived with all my life, and then lessened still further. I had progressed from using a mobility chair to using crutches, then only one crutch, then a cane, until I needed nothing at all.

I woke up in the mornings to find that nothing hurt and everything worked. That alone was a miracle. I never got tired of it. This, looking at my new self, realizing that this person was _me_ was another miracle.

I went closer still, until I was looking myself right in the eyes. I was still quite pale, as I'd not gotten much sun over the last few years, and my hair was only a little darker than when I was in my teens. Still thick, too. I'd escaped male-pattern baldness completely by means of having a gene fragment spliced in—both my brothers had thinning hair, and our father went bald. I did look younger than I was, maybe ten, fifteen years younger. My eyes were light blue. The tinted mirror glass darkened me out of recognition, at first glance, anyway. I had a high, wide forehead, but fortunately I had enough chin to balance it out. I was still thin, but now I was muscular, not bony. Wiry was the word for me. I was in decent physical condition, and I meant to stay that way.

Intelligent and intense? Yep, that was me. Good-looking? I had been convinced I was ugly; I'd even talked about cosmetic surgery with Primavera. When I brought it up, her response had been, "Don't blame the wall for the wallpaper you picked out."

"What?" I asked her.

"The ugliest thing about your face is the expression you sometimes hang on it. I can, of course, make any changes you want, but you'll have to be more specific than 'I'm ugly, change everything.' Hah!" She made a sound of pure exasperation.

She refused to discuss the subject of facial reconstruction until I could provide her with digitals and a written explanation to justify why I wanted it done. I hadn't made up my mind about it as yet.

Now it seemed as if even I thought I didn't need it. Once I stepped out of my skin for a moment, I'd thought I was good-looking enough. I never had imagined that.

I'm somewhat ashamed to say that the first thing I did after that amazing revelation was to go out to find a woman to pick up. Look, I was then thirty-two and still a virgin. What else would anyone —anyone male—have done, under the circumstances? And yes, I managed to lose my virginity shortly thereafter.


	3. Part Three:  Trying to go home again

A/N: Hi! For those folks who are regulars of mine--a clarification. This fic will not be cutting into any of my regular fics as far as time and inspiration go--as it's already completely finished. I'm just posting it chapter by chapter. I wrote it before I ever signed up with fanfiction. However, any reviews and constructive criticism will be most welcome for the time when I rework it with an eye for professional publication.

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**Part Three: Trying To Go Home Again**

Once I was through with my transformation, it was time to return home and get serious.

Dad had died when I was twenty—did I mention that before? His death happened in between the fall and Christmas breaks in my next-to-last year. I will always think of it with the bitterest of feelings. During that fall break, the last time I saw him alive, he had reached out to me, tentatively. There had been the possibility of a real relationship between us for the first time. Then he had died, very suddenly, of heart disease.

I was preparing for some very heavy International Bar exams right then, and I did most of my studying out on the sun porch of our weekend place there at Gloster Bay. It was too distracting in the house. Ed had brought home his fiancée to meet the family. He had not told our parents in advance, so the welcoming of Elyse, who was almost ten years older than Ed, had two small children under the age of three, and was already pregnant with Ed's child, had been interesting, to say the least.

George had finally explained that the reason he had not yet gone back to college was that he had spent all his semester funds, all his tuition and board, on a trip to Majorca with his girlfriend. I must have looked very stable and reliable in comparison to them.

Dad came out and joined me on the porch, and sat there silently for a quarter of an hour before he said, "You deserved better than what you got." He was looking grey and worn, in those last few weeks of his life.

I looked at him, and I think I must have looked as shocked as I felt. He cleared his throat, and continued. "Not just from life, but from us, too. I realized, the other day, when I ran into an old college friend, and we started talking about our lives, and our families. I hadn't seen him in thirty-five years."

I didn't know what to say, so I nodded, and tried to look encouraging.

"I told him about Ed, and George, and when I got to you, I told him about your progress and what your professors have said about you, the sorts of job offers you're getting already and all…" He looked at his hands. "He said, 'You must be really proud of him.' He hadn't said that about your brothers. I was ashamed of myself. Am ashamed of myself. I had to see you through someone else's eyes, to see that you're turning out the best of all my boys. I have a lot to be proud of, in you—. Do you hate us?"

I stammered out, "It isn't nearly that simple." I had so many things I wanted to say, they were choking me up on the way out.

"No, I guess it isn't. We're your family, and that makes us the only game in town. I would like to try and make it up to you. I'm so tired these days, though. Let's make some time, at Christmas…" Mom called him, then, and he went in. I went back to my law school the next day.

He died only two and a half weeks later.

I was furious. I was heartbroken. At his funeral, I stood over his coffin, thinking, _I waited all my life to hear you say you were proud of me. I waited all that time to hear you say you loved me. I wanted it so badly. Is that all I get, just a taste? You have no right to be dead, I 'm not through with you. _

I did not cry. Yes, crying would have relieved my grief and made me feel better, but I didn't want that. I hoarded every scrap of feeling. Anger is an energy.

After Dad had died, Mom had given up her career in politics to take over the Genet-York directorship at the A.L.-Bion Consortium, to keep it warm until such time as Edward was ready to sit in it. The bigger plan in the works for Ed was still that he should become the Executive Directorship when Henry Lancaster died. It was a successful coup, and for twelve years now, Ed had been CEO of A.L.-Bion.

Incidentally, the A.L. in A.L.-Bion stands for Angevin Laboratories. The Angevins began the company, but there aren't any direct line descendants. The twelve Directorship families are all partly Angevin, to some degree of cousinship.

George was chief financial officer. Mother had stepped down when Ed acceded to the E.D., as the by-laws permitted only one director from each family. Since George had married Isabelle Neville, who held the Neville directorship, we effectively had two. Isabelle went with everything that Ed did.

The consortium was and is in danger of collapse because of the insane by-laws and the Imagist faith. And because George was CFO, but that's for later. The by-laws dictated that directorships were hereditary. Most of the A.L.-Bion directors couldn't direct a school play. And you cannot run a technology-based business according to the dictates of an anti-technology faith. Old Lancaster had been a hard-line Imagist, like my parents.

Ed was too placatory an ED. He wanted to please everybody. No. I tell a lie. Edward hadn't much of an idea what to do, and so he listened to, and took the advice of, everybody. Most of the other directors were of Lancaster's generation and also Imagist. Edward was spinning the wheels of a consortium stuck in the mud.

My goal was still the same. I wanted the Executive Directorship for myself. Everything I did was meant to advance me toward that end. Why? A.L.-Bion isn't the biggest or most advanced of the maker of reclamation units, contained environment systems, and hydroponics modules, true, but it is the one which my family has partly owned for five generations. The Executive Directorship was the biggest prize in our circle of acquaintances, and getting it, having it, would be at once the sweetest revenge and the greatest achievement possible. They had hoisted Edward up into it, regardless of the fact that there were more intelligent, more dedicated, and more talented people at hand.

Me, for instance.

I had put together a group of people who would help me get there and help me run it once I had it. I found them as I found Dr. Visconti, by combing through the cream of the recent graduates until I found just the ones I wanted. Since they will play parts in my story from time to time, I'll give you a brief word picture of each.

J. Howard Norfolk is a name which evokes a prep-school background, country club membership, and a big trust fund. All of which was true of him, but I should also add that the J was short for Jesus, and the Howard stood for Howard University. His skin was a shade somewhere between sepia and sienna, and his family could look back on twelve generations of highly educated professionals, which was a lot more than mine could. His field was accounting and finance, and he was extremely good at his work would eventually be my CFO. I knew he could look after the costs and bring things in within a budget.

Outside of his work, his passion was for the works of Alexandre Dumas the elder. He owns every book Dumas ever wrote, in several editions and various languages. His enthusiasm had even inspired him to take up fencing, and he held several amateur championships. He got me to take up fencing, too. Life ought to be one long learning experience.

Regina Radcliffe was, like me, a lawyer. She went to law school as her youngest child started college. I foresaw the need for another legal mind, and also for someone with more life experience. She was a smallish woman in early middle age, with graying black hair, delicate elfin features, and clear grey-green eyes. She had no desire to practice trial law, because, she said, as the mother of grown children, she had done quite enough arguing in her life already.

Her intelligence and discernment were proven to me beyond all doubt when she declared that my sister-in-law Elyse was, I quote, 'an avaricious, sexually opportunistic social climber with a soul made of dry ice.' She had reached this conclusion independently. This coincided exactly with my own opinion, and I told Regina so, which surprised her. She had thought I was among Elyse's thralls.

Franklin Lovell would research, investigate and evaluate people, businesses and events, and compile dossiers. He worked his way through school with the goal of becoming an investigator, and then found himself doing nothing but background checks. I came along and offered him a job with more scope. He was a little taller than I am, Caucasian, but on the darker end of the spectrum, and good-looking. His major pursuit outside of work seemed to be sex. I think he took his last name too seriously, but as he was unmarried and a responsible sort, spreading neither diseases nor pregnancies, I decided it wasn't any of my business what, or who, he did.

These were the people who would accompany me to A.L.-Bion when I started there. I'm glad to say I chose people I could like and respect as associates. There are more of them now, and I hoped to find allies among the younger Directorship family members—those who otherwise wouldn't have a chance at power for decades.

I hadn't forgotten my doctor, either. She would have the best job in my power to appoint: Head of Science. I intended to enlarge and expand the scope of A.L.-Bion. The Mars Project was on the horizon, and I meant to get A.L.-Bion the life support system contract.

Of course, first I would have to win Primavera back again. We had not parted on good terms. She found out that I had blocked her from those two ecological engineering projects, that I might avail myself of her services. I said I had nothing to do with it. I lied.

We had been through so much together; she had gotten me through my transformation, and I had seen her through the death of her father. If I hadn't done that, I don't think our friendship would have survived. Discovering my part in her troubles had defeated her temper, temporarily, and I knew I had work to do on that front.

I missed her. We would be friends again, though. If I had killed two good opportunities for her, I would make it up to her with something better; a position she would have had to labor twenty years to get anywhere else.

There was a lot to do before that, however. I was returning to the fold, with my crew in tow, minus Dr. Visconti. I was going to join George in the finance division. He was in deep yogurt, so much so that he had cheated his sister-in-law Daenne out of most of her inheritance and maxed out all his and his wife's credit. He was hanging on by his fingernails, and I was ready to step on his hand.

I don't suppose George meant to become the greatest white-collar criminal of our day and age. It's not as if he had written essays about it while we were growing up. He probably thought that he could make good and cover it before he was discovered. He might have sworn that each new shady deal would be the last, but by the time I returned, the only thing propping A.L.-Bion up—was me. From a distance, even through the worst of the pain, I had been making myself useful to A.L.-Bion in general and Edward in particular.

I had told Edward all about my money raising ventures, and he was so impressed that he asked for my advice and assistance. He farmed out some of his own money to me and was delighted when bread cast upon my waters returned to him ten-fold. He rewarded me with stock, and more work. I did it legitimately, too. I wanted to have a bright, shining, virtuous record when the time came for George to go to prison and for me to step in as CFO.

I had stayed abreast of things on the domestic side, too, during my absence. I may have been distant, but I was a son/brother/uncle to pattern by.

Everything sent to or from their various e-dresses also came to me, unbeknownst to them. All their records were wide open to my inspection, as well, and I would skim through their files and folders every so often. I was the trout in their milk, the fly on their walls, and the snake in their beds.

I even wrote and called regularly. No milestone or event in their lives went by without an appropriate remembrance from me. A few words here, a thoughtfully chosen gift there…I quite enjoyed it. There is a special pleasure that comes from choosing just the right present. It doesn't have to be anything extravagant. A quarter kilo of a particular candy from someone's hometown can give much more enjoyment than a randomly chosen bottle of perfume—my brother Ed's wife Elyse had written a long clikgram of complaint to her sister after one birthday. I can proudly say that I was the instigator of seven different fights about gifts over the years.

And I was an uncle several times over. I had nine nieces and nephews I could admit to knowing about—Ed had several secret children for whom he was paying child support. Edward and Elyse had four of their own. There were two from Elyse's first marriage and of course there was Stephen, the son Ed had sired while in high school. He was already a grown man, an MD with a clinic in Uganda.

George had married Isabelle Neville, as I mentioned before. She and her sister Daenne were home-schooled with us. George and Isabelle had two kids of their own. George was either less fertile or more careful than Ed; he had no seedlings outside the garden patch. I had never seen most of these children in the flesh, but, as I told them all, I had grown to know and love them through our correspondence. They were primed and prepared to greet me with delirious joy.

I wasn't dropping in without warning. I had informed everybody of my plans well in advance, and then monitored their reactions. My six year old niece Margali wrote to her friend Odette, "its grate hees coming coz hees the best of all mi uncles and ants but ive never seen him M & D say hees Quazimodo im really really skared". Ed was blithely pleased I would be working for him full time. George referred to me as 'the little turd.' Well, George was sweating and scared of what I might learn once I got there. Too late!

Isabelle said nothing at all, and Elyse wrote to her divorced friend Maree, "You ought to meet him. Good-looking men are all shits anyway just because they can be, and when they have money they're even worse. Look at Ed."

Mother, however, was wary. "I don't think he's changed. I think he's capable of going on for years, as caring and thoughtful as anyone could be. Then, one day, we'll find out he was just being polite."

Smart woman, my mother.

I think I put as much thought and care into what I would wear to meet them as any girl getting ready for a first date. I had needed a whole new wardrobe after my transformation, of course, and I wanted to do it up right. I had opened my wallet wide for it. I now got regular compliments on my appearance, and I liked that, it was nice. For this occasion, I chose a classic: a custom navy blue suit, a good shirt, and a silk tie. Before I got to the waiting area, I paused, took off my jacket and rolled up my shirt sleeves a little. To make the change even more dramatic. To let them see. I realized then that the surfaces and angles around me turned the wall in front of me into a shadowy mirror. I could see the whole Genet-York clan, without being seen.

With all the kids, there sure were a lot of them. I zeroed in on something I found very interesting. The adults were watching for me—but they weren't looking at the faces of passers-by. They were looking at their _bodies_. Except for my mother. She was scrutinizing the faces. She had guessed.

It gave me a nice feeling to realize she knew me well enough to guess what I had done. That passed in a moment.

I picked up my carry-on, slung my jacket over my arm, and stepped around the corner, a slightly crumpled, slightly weary man looking forward to a reunion with his family. Which was the sincere and honest truth.

It took me three steps to reach my mother. I said, "Hi, Mom," took her hands in both of mine, leaned over, and kissed her powdery cheek, realizing as I did so that I was now taller than she was. I'll give her this; she only flinched a little as my lips brushed her skin. Around us, the rest of the family gaped and gasped before breaking into a hearty welcome. I was thoroughly hugged and thumped and kissed, with small children jumping up and down as if they had springs and attaching themselves like limpets to my legs. The adults might have been singing a round, only instead of 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat', the lyrics were: "I can't believe it! This is wonderful! You look great!" The children had an antiphony going, of "Uncle Richard! Uncle Richard! Uncle Richard! I'm Margali! (Or Ed junior, or whichever he or she was) It's me it's me it's me!"

Not much could have made that moment any sweeter.

Of course, I was still planning to drive a wedge into every crack and flaw in my family and then start in with a sledgehammer, but for that one brief speck of time, I could and did suspend my disbelief, and just accepted it all.

So I was home. Time to settle in to my job and my life.

I found a furnished executive apartment, and took out a short term lease. I didn't intend to live there for very long, because I intended to leave my bachelorhood behind me, and my wife might have opinions about our living quarters. I had a particular girl in mind, too. Daenne Neville, Isabelle's sister.

I had several reasons for marrying. Love was not among them. Some were business. She didn't know it, but George had seen to it that she received less than her fair share of the Neville estate. She should have gotten half, but she got less than a quarter. I was keeping that, and George's other foibles and felonies, in reserve right then, but Daenne would, I trusted, be most grateful to me when I restored it to her. When my brother and Isabelle were in prison—yes, Isabelle was involved, too—Daenne would have the Neville directorship. I would have her support when the time came. But some of my reasons were personal too.

The first and most pressing for me, was, quite frankly, sex.

Before I had myself remade, various factors had prevented me from having a satisfactory sex life with anyone, including myself. During the three years of intensive work, given all the surgery, pain and medication, I had rarely thought about sex. My physician had advised me against any major self-improvement measures in that area until after I was done with the other work, for as my general health improved, so too, might my sexual drive and functioning. She had been right. Around the time that I was ready to leave the hospital and begin a year of monitored normal living, I realized that my engine, which had previously only turned over weakly and reluctantly, had been completely rebuilt. Now something much more powerful was under the hood. I went out on the town, but I found out I didn't like casual dating.

Marrying Daenne would, I hoped, be a solution. I wasn't choosing her because she overwhelmed me, but she was attractive enough. As it turned out, we were not that sexually compatible, but anything is better than nothing.

Next, I wanted to reassure my family as to my basic normality. I would be married, like Edward and George, and settled into a life—and a wife— that they could understand. My wife would be from a family they had known since forever, and one of the Directorship families, at that. She was even an in-law already. Daenne was sweetly pretty, had been raised in my mother's faith, was adequately educated, had good manners, and knew how to fit in. If she wasn't precisely brilliant, well, neither was most of my family.

Lastly, I had a score to settle with Daenne herself. As I said before, she had been home-schooled with us, and had taunted, insulted and mocked me without mercy. Her little pink tongue has always had sharp edges. I vividly recalled how she had once said that the thought of kissing me made her want to throw up. It would amuse me to remember that every time we had sex.

I was confident of success. Daenne was divorced and in debt. She was currently working as an assistant manager in a kitchen goods store. Most of her friends in our circle, the children of A.L.-Bion directors, had dropped her; they had money, she didn't. I had money. Marrying me would restore her to her former way of living. And I would adore her.

At least temporarily. I had no intention of growing old with her.

I dropped into the store where she worked, making sure to wear an expensive watch and expensive sneakers with my basic white t-shirt and blue jeans, just to say hi. Saying hi segued into asking her to lunch. She accepted. Soon we were getting caught up over inferior deli food. As we chatted, I took note of where her eyes went. She kept looking me over, looking at the new me. I knew then that I looked better than just acceptable.

She would ask me about it. I bided my time. I told her about my new apartment, and how I was now working for A.L.-Bion, and how strange it was to be working a regular schedule after taking so many years off. "Oh! Why did you stop in the first place?" There it was. She probably thought herself subtle.

"Medical reasons," I said, with my best wistful grin. Boyish charm, that would go over well, I had thought. The t-shirt and jeans were part of it. Appealing, even sexy, but nonthreatening, and familiar.

"You mean…corrective work?"

"Yes."

"Isabelle cliked me...But I thought she… You look great, Richard. You really do. Like a whole different person. Do you mind if I ask about it?"

"No. Not at all."

"Did you—have anything done to your face? Because I can't tell."

_Because you never looked at my face, only at my defects,_ I thought, and told her the truth. "No." and then I made up a reason. "I wouldn't feel like I was looking at myself in the mirror if I did." None of her business.

"Well—you're really a nice looking guy, now."

"Thank you. That means a lot. Especially coming from—you," and I was off and running. Within the space of that lunch, I let her know, without coming right out and saying it, that I had loved her all my life, and had endured everything, all the agony, only that one day, perhaps, she would… I sent out all the signals. It was beautiful.

I walked her back to her store, bid her farewell, and said, a little sadly, "It was nice seeing you…Do you ever spend time at George and Isabelle's?"

"Sometimes…Um, can I have your e-dress? I'd clik you when I'm going over there, if you want."

"Yes…and can I have yours?"

A couple of days before the wedding, I got a call.

"The only person in the world who would send me a dozen live butterflies on my birthday is you," said Primavera.

"Were they yellow?"

"As any lemon peel."

"Then it was me. I'm glad you're speaking to me again."

"I'm still angry, and I haven't forgiven you, but my boredom is worse than my anger."

Before I knew it, it was two hours later, and we were beginning to wind it down. She admitted that her current work situation was less than ideal, and I broached the idea of her coming to work for A.L.-Bion. I explained about George and the state of chaos the consortium finances were in, and what I planned to do about him and to him.

Her response? "So he's managed to seriously endanger the continued income and employment of hundreds of people? Take no prisoners. Nail him to the wall by his ears," and offered a few refinements to what I already had in mind. Then I dropped the news and told her about Daenne.

Silence. Then, "Richard. You don't love her, or you wouldn't have waited two hours to tell me about her. Whether she loves you or not, it's not fair to her. Nor is it fair to you. My anger now exceeds my boredom again. Goodbye."

The vow of silence was back in effect. It was just as well. I had learned that I couldn't bullshit her, and there was no truthful way I could justify my intentions toward Daenne to the woman I really wanted.

Yes. Primavera Visconti. Why her?

Daenne was 'attractive enough', but I found Primavera extremely attractive, and on many levels, too. I _could _go on about how her wit is like extra brut champagne, which is the driest and most sparkling, or bring up the subject of her smile or her figure, but I won't. And I don't say that she's beautiful, because that's just a matter of opinion. I am aware that my tastes may differ from those of another man. I have heard others describe her as 'striking', which is entirely true, and she scares the shit out of most men—I don't get why that should be—and raises the hackles of most women. To each their own; she suited me.

Anyway, I think my libido imprinted on her years ago.

The real factor was entirely emotional, beyond any consideration of physical or even mental attributes. I mentioned my brief spell of casual dating. After a short 'kid in a candy store' spree, which ended when I realized I was acting just like Edward did, I had reassessed what I wanted of life and of relationships, and started looking for a woman with whom I could have something that lasted a while. I didn't find one out there.

Once matters started to assume any depth whatsoever, I could not get beyond a hostility toward women so profound as to border on misogyny. It disturbed me; I thought I was attracted to nothing but shallow, vapid cows and castrating, vitriolic harpies. It took me a shamefully long time to realize it was more me than it was them. I was rejecting them first.

Before I was remade, I was frustrated, bitter, and resentful. I suppose I had expected all that to evaporate once I could actually get laid. It hadn't, and I realized I doubted and distrusted women.

Because not one of those women I had dated would have gone out with me before, and if I had gotten into conversation with one of them, before, she would have spent the whole time staring, or worse, very obviously _not_ staring.

It didn't matter how sympathetic she might be, when I told her about my past—and she might even try to make it up to me in an intense and immediate physical way—I knew she would have been just the same as any other. I could not escape that knowledge, nor could I keep from feeling like I was putting something over on her.

I couldn't believe in or trust any of them.

I could believe in Primavera.

So why was I marrying Daenne instead, a woman who I didn't love, trust, believe in, or like? A woman for whom I even felt contempt? Besides that I was being an asshole, that is? Why was I not marrying Primavera?

Once a woman says, "Can't we just be friends?", even the friendship is over. I was not about to risk hearing _that_ from Primavera.

So I married Daenne. I wasn't unkind to her; I just had trouble remembering her. Our likes, dislikes and interests were so different that we hardly spent any time together except in bed. We soon had separate bedrooms because she said I kept having loud nightmares. If she had had the sort of life or the amount of surgery I had, maybe she would have understood. I tried, in the first few months of that marriage, to use what I had learned about being a good lover— to pay attention, ask and take directions, be gentlemanly (ladies first, and _never_ slam the door in her face), but Daenne let me know that I really needn't bother on her account. I slipped into doing what I so often do with people, which is to go through the motions and not think hard about it.

She didn't hang a sign on her door saying, "You are now cut off," but she might as well have. On the other hand, my money and status were quite acceptable, so the stream never dried up completely. Indeed, that marriage was not fair to either of us.


	4. Part Four: A barrel of Merlot

**Four: A Barrel Of Merlot**

"George Clarence Genet-York, you are under arrest. You stand accused of…"

I had debated with myself over the best way to expose George. Would it be better to set someone else up to reveal his crimes, and feign shock and dismay with everyone else, or should I pretend to discover them myself, undergoing a horrific internal struggle as family feeling warred with conscience, before going to Edward and making a reluctant report?

In the end, it was a combination of the two. I had chosen Norfolk for his financial acumen. He spotted that something stank with the A.L.-Bion accounts—and then brought his findings to me. Together, Norfolk, Lovell and I, plus four of A.L.-Bion's staff accountants, uncovered the whole thing. George had done a good job of covering up his depredations, he had shifted funds around from account to account, making sure there was enough to cover salaries and day-to-day operations, but when several billion global currency units are missing, it leaves a large hole.

We worked four extra hours every evening for a week. Well, they worked and I acted as if I were working. My part had all been done beforehand. I had to hold myself back from 'discovering' too much too quickly, but I filled in by occasionally burying my face in my hands and pretending to grieve. When George's senior accountant, Elias Morton-Bishop, stopped by one evening and found us at it, I was grim and secretive, while dropping vague but curiously specific hints as to what was going on. I gave him a severe warning, in no uncertain terms, that he was not to tell my brothers. Especially not Ed.

Of course he told Edward immediately.

Edward had both George and me in front of him first thing the next morning, just as I had planned.

George looked like crap and smelled like whiskey. Edward wasn't looking any too good himself. He had inherited the heart disease that killed our father before he turned sixty. I would never have to worry about that myself, now that I had an artificial one, but Edward was a good Imagist and wouldn't have surgery. He was reasonably fit for a man of forty-six, but I was counting on his living another seven to ten years.

That morning Ed looked grey and bruised. He looked from George to me and back again.

"All right. What the hell's going on?" he asked.

I looked at George and gave him thirty-five seconds to say something. He didn't. I spoke.

"Last week, my assistant found some irregularities in our financial data. I didn't think anything of it at first, but I wanted to clear it up, so he and I looked a little closer. We found more errors. I got together a few people from the finance office, and we put in some overtime. The picture got worse and worse. Ed, A.L.-Bion isn't in the black. We're in the red so deep it's like we're sunk in a barrel full of merlot."

George remained silent. Ed turned even greyer. "How bad is it?" he asked.

"I can't be sure," I said, even though I knew just how much, within a thousand globals, "but—," and I told him.

"George. You've been my CFO for ten years. How did this happen?"

"Potato chips," said George. "You think you'll just have a couple, then you have a handful, then you're half-way through the bag and you think you'll just take a couple more, and quit. Before you know it, there's nothing left but salty crumbs in the bottom of the bag," and he fell silent again. The silence spread as Edward thought about what that statement implied.

"Ed, when you made him CFO, he was young, he was only twenty-six. Too young. I know I can't defend him, but—," I said.

"He was my—our—brother. And what were you doing at twenty-six? Getting that bastard's rights bill passed. This is a betrayal so big… And not just me. My family. His family. Every member of all the Directorship families. Our mother. Our father's memory and that of every Genet-York—."

"Will you shut up? And think about what you did to me! I didn't want the job. I never wanted the job. And you!" George turned on me. "I'd swear you came into this world to ruin my life. They hardly ever gave me a goddamn thought after you were born. Every year, it just got worse. I bet you think you had it rough. You were three times as smart as me, and you were _challenged_. There was not one single thing I could do that was half as good as you, except the things you couldn't do at all, so what were they worth? And then you come back and inside of six months—you finished me off."

Another blind spot. I had never looked at things from George's point of view. Or Edward's. Was George a tender plant that had to be nurtured in the greenhouse of A.L.-Bion, or he would perish? I filed the idea away for later thought.

"Is there anything that can be done?" Ed ignored George, who went for the liquor cabinet, and addressed me.

"I don't know," I said, feigning ignorance. "If George has the money stashed away somewhere, or tied up in something negotiable?" I knew that for years, all that he had taken had gone toward paying interest on previous illicit loans.

"No," mumbled George, through his whisky fog.

Ed looked older and sicker. "Can it be concealed?"

"Not for much longer. A.L.-Bion is a house of cards, at this point," I told him.

"What now? Do we declare bankruptcy?"

"We aren't quite bankrupt yet, and we may be able to avoid it. Isn't the structure of A.L.-Bion intended to create a familial bond? Spread out among the Directorship families, there should be enough assets to cover the deficit. My advice is, call an emergency meeting, and explain everything. For generations, A.L.-Bion has supported them; now they are called upon to support A.L.-Bion."

"Damn, but they'll hate it. And George?"

"I—don't know. I wish to God it had been anyone but him. How I got through the audit, I'll never know, except that I tried to see it as only numbers. I am so sorry," I said. I thank God for my acting ability.

"No, Richard. You did what had to be done. You've been a true brother to me. George—George hasn't been a true brother to either of us."

Once George had been arrested—I have some beautiful footage of him doing the 'perp walk'—booked and released on bond, the family atmosphere was strained and tense. Strained as a jar of baby food and tense as the suspension cables of an old fashioned bridge.

I would have enjoyed the situation more if I hadn't had to deal with it close up. The scenario didn't play out in real life the way I had imagined it would. Everybody involved had their own take on matters.

My mother's opinion was that I should, since I was such a high-powered lawyer, defend George.

Flabbergasted. I had never before been flabbergasted in my life, and I may never be again, but that did it. Apart from the fact that a witness for the prosecution is not allowed to be the attorney for the defense, _George wanted to plead not guilty._

Ed's response to the problem was to try to glue the family together. What we, all fifteen of us Genet-Yorks, needed, he thought, was a weekend at the old place on Gloster Bay, out away from it all, just like we used to when we were growing up. He conveniently forgot how very rare those weekends were.

This never fails to impress: We own an _entire quarter of an acre of ground_, with only _one_ dwelling on it, for use only on the weekends, and a private boat. The taxes are _horrendous_. At that time, I owned a sixth of both properties, or one third of my father's half.

The plan was that we should go down to Gloster Bay on Saturday, spend that day out on the boat, overnight at the cabin, and then spend the next day in and around the area, revisiting our youth.

The trip down was bad enough; the kids were excited and spent the time yelling until they wore themselves out. Their fathers expected their mothers to handle them, and the mothers were inclined to agree to anything so long as it meant the kids weren't whining. I told myself that they weren't my kids.

My brothers and their wives had chosen to raise their children as we Genet-York brothers had been brought up, which was with minimal parental involvement and a succession of care-providers to do the hard work. I don't know why they bothered to have children at all, when they spent so little time with them and got so little joy out of them.

The kids had been torn away from their care providers and were expected to listen to, interact with, and obey the virtual strangers who'd given them life. The situation was a recipe for stress.

The Gloster Bay house had belonged to our grandfather; Dad had bought the boat. It had not been used much at all since his death, and Ed, who'd taken responsibility for it, had—not taken enough responsibility for it. When we got down to the marina on Saturday morning, it would not start.

How much trouble could it have been to arrange for someone to test it a week before and carry out any needed repairs? Surely not that much. One call would have been enough. I would have thought of it and carried it through if I'd been running the show. But Edward had not, nor had Elyse, and so fifteen Genet-Yorks were left to hang around the dock while the techs worked on it. On the grounds of family togetherness, the kids had been forcibly separated from their entertainment systems before we left the city, and were now going hyper or sullen as their natures dictated. Mother was sitting on one of the coolers of food, my brothers were huddled around the turbs watching the techs work, and the wives were leaning on the guard rails, having a bitching session.

Two or three hours, said the tech.

Screaming children. Sulking teens.

Somebody had to do something.

Why not me?

I whipped out my Powermod and asked for a list of nearby diversions.

No, not shopping…Formal gardens would be too formal…Amusement park? Too late in the season, it was closed. Ice cream parlor, creams made fresh on the premises? Not before lunch…

Nature center? Right on the other curve of the bay, in the state park. I could just see the shimmer of the park's containment dome from where I stood on the dock. It had three distinct ecozones, and it was set up for groups, with a picnic area, a learning center, and a gift shop. They had teacher and student interactive multi-media linkages available for rent. Jackpot!

"All right!" I clapped my hands. "Kids—we're going on an expedition to the Gloster Bay Nature Center. This is not up for argument or bargaining, so get your jackets. Mike, Ellie, grab a cooler and re-arrange things so we'll have our lunches. Ask your grandmother if she'll move, and ask nicely."

Grumbling from the peanut gallery.

"Here are the rules for the day. You will come along. There will be no pouting, no sulking, no swearing, and no complaining—unless you're actually in physical distress. You can think and feel however you please, but you will look and act bright, interested, and involved, even if you aren't any of those things. It will be good training for later in life.

"We will explore the park and the nature center's resources from the time we get there until 12:15, when we will, and not before then, visit the gift shop, where I will buy each of you two items that you want provided that one of them is a book appropriate for your age and reading ability. At 12:45, we will lunch in the picnic area. After lunch, if I feel that your collective behavior has been acceptable, I will take you to a place where they _make_ ice cream with _real_ milk and _real_ fruit—."

I was drowned out by gasps and shrieks of excitement. I guess that old, old song was true—we all scream for ice cream. "Only if you're good! After that, we will return here. I will call ahead to see what's going on, and we'll wing it from there. Daenne, will you accompany me as co-pilot?"

"A nature center?" asked my wife. "With—things running around loose?"

"Yes."

"I don't think so."

"As you wish." How I disliked her. "Are the lunches sorted?"

"Uh-huh."

"Did anything alcoholic get included?" My brothers and their wives quietly ignored that stricture of Imagism, and I had been surprised to find that I, the only non-Imagist, was the most abstentious one in the family, after Mom.

"Um—maybe. I don't know…" said Mike. George, I knew, had started experimenting with alcohol when he was about Mike's age. You have to keep an eye on kids.

"Then make sure there isn't. I will be the only person along on this who's old enough to drink, and I won't want any of it. All right, troops! To the vehicle!"

As I herded the kids to the parking garage, I overheard Daenne say to her sister and Elyse, "He'll be right at home with all the bugs, spiders and snakes." The three of them laughed nastily.

That did not bode well. I very much wanted to go back and take it up with her, but… It was a question of priorities. I could get into an argument with Daenne almost any old time, but the kids were there waiting.

Daenne wasn't that important.

The Gloster Cliffs State Park was a fantastic idea. I rented a teacher's module for myself and student units for all the kids, even Jonathan, who was only four. So what if he lost it in a bog? I could afford to replace it. What mattered was that he would feel like part of the group. The programming on the student units adjusted itself to the individual's level of comprehension, so everybody could use them. They had analysis ports and built-in cameras, as well. The idea was that the students should roam freely around the park, taking digitals, sound and visuals both, of the plants, animals, rocks, and so forth, using the analysis ports to take mineral and genetic samples. I hoped that meant only leaves and found objects. I didn't want the kids hurting any live animals or messing with any dead ones. The units would identify their findings, and keep track of the data. My module compiled all their information, and—vital from my point of view—also tracked exactly where and how active they were.

I kept the youngest, Margali and Jonathan, George and Isabelle's kids, by me at all times. They were six and four respectively. The others I split into three teams of two each, Tom with Rick, Mike with Ed Jr, the two girls together, and sent them off.

The three envirozones were forest, meadow, and wetlands. It's very rare to come across so much undeveloped space, and what we have left is protected for the treasure it is. The kids were amazed by the openness of it all. I only hoped nobody turned out to be agoraphobic, and luckily for me, none of them were. It was early October, the colors were glorious, and the temperature was perfect.

The kids got really into the activity. Even the teens enjoyed themselves, although it took a little while before they warmed up to it. It helped that I was prepared to be enthusiastic about it, and I am, by consensus, the best uncle they have. Before long, I had teams dashing back and forth to tell me and each other, "You've gotta come see this!" "Eewww—gross!" "Look, it's beautiful!"

Margali, Jonathan and I wandered off into the woods, where we got to see and record white-tailed deer, box turtles, chipmunks, lots and lots of trees, blue jays, chickadees, and a small grey and white bird whose name made Margali giggle. She was just the right age to get a little thrill out of a seemingly naughty word.

"The module says it's a—," she mouthed the word, and covered her mouth with her hand.

"A what?" I asked.

"Umm—I can't say it."

"Why not? It's a titmouse."

Giggles escaped from behind her fingers. "Oh, Uncle Richard!" She scraped one forefinger over the other at me in a gesture older than time.

"What? Why's that so funny? It's what that bird is called. Titmouse. You can say it. It's easy."

More giggles, or perhaps I should say, titters, erupted from her. "No, I can't!"

"Why're you laughing? I don't see what's so funny…"

While we were learning that a particular bird was called a scarlet tanager, she suddenly asked me a very awkward question.

"Why are you sending our dad to jail?"

I'd been dreading this moment. Up ahead of us, Jonathan had turned over a rock and was watching the life under it scramble madly to get away from the light. I felt just like one of those creatures right then.

"Your dad may not be going to jail, we don't know that yet." Technically true, and kinder to hear. "It wouldn't be me who's sending him there. Anyway, you mean prison, not jail. A jail is where you go before trial. Prison is where you go after you're found guilty." Yes, I knew I sounded stupid and stuffy.

"Do you want him to go to prison?" Her eyes were filling up with tears. "He says you hate him. W-why do you hate him? Do you hate me?"

"Sweetheart." I knelt down beside her. "Don't cry. I don't hate you. As for hating your dad—. Families are complicated. Aren't you mad at Jonathan sometimes, and he at you? What about on the ride down, when you were dividing the marshmallows from your cereal?"

"The marshmallows?" she gulped down tears.

"Yes. You were sharing them out one-for-me-one-for-you, and he was eating his as fast as he got them, so when you were finished counting, he didn't have any left, and you had lots."

"Yes, and he started to howl, cause he didn't have any. Mom made me give him some of mine, and that wasn't fair. Mercy, she's our care-provider, she would've been fair. Jonathan's a little baby-brat."

The accused Jonathan looked up. "Am not," he protested. "You stink, Marga."

"You're the one who stinks," she rebutted. "You stink like dirty socks. You stink like the runny white stuff in the vegetable drawer."

Runny white stuff in the vegetable drawer? I was a little shocked to hear that good food was left to rot in my brother's family fridge.

"Mom stinks, too." Margali wasn't done complaining. "It wasn't fair! Ohhh. You mean that even though you're both grown up—."

"We still feel about each other like you do about Jonathan and your mom. Unfortunately, yes. Now. Suppose that your dad was the one in charge of the family's whole supply of marshmallows, and like Jonathan, ate not only his own, but a lot of everybody else's, in secret."

"Is that what he did? Only money, not marshmallows?"

"Exactly! You're very intelligent, Margali. What would Mercy do if Jonathan ate your marshmallows without asking?"

"Give him a time-out."

"Would you think that was fair and right?"

"I'd want to smack him."

"I can understand that. Would she let you?"

"No. She'd give me a time-out, too."

"Then you can understand me when I tell you that prison is the grown-up version of time-out." I may never have given a better explanation, in court or out, than I gave her then.

"Oh! I get it! But if—but if Dad goes to jail, I mean, to prison, he won't be home with us. Maybe not for years." Jonathan had abandoned his nature hunt to listen, solemnly and silently, to us.

No point in asking if they loved him, if they would miss him. Of course they did, and would. He was their father. He was part of the foundations of their world. My brother George was not a solid rock on which to build in safety; he was sand, inclined to abruptly move and drift, but he was _theirs_. Their mother might be gone, as well. Isabelle had signed where George had told her to sign. That was not good for these little ones, not good at all.

"I'm making you a promise. Both of you. We don't know what's going to happen. Your dad may be acquitted—which means he'll go free, but—." I was still kneeling, and I then gathered them both to me. "If he has to go to prison, you will have me. I won't be living with you, because I'm not married to your mom, but I will talk to you, clikgram you, message you every day. I'll do it several times a day if you need me."

I was getting cried on, both shoulders at once. "And you know I remember things, and I keep my promises."

"What did he do it for?" Margali wailed into my shoulder. "Why?"

I could not answer that.

We clung together for a few moments, until another group appeared on the trail. By then, it was a little past noon, so I led them back up to the visitor's center, where we whiled away a little time in the shop as the other six kids wandered in. I helped Margali choose a book for herself—one I remembered another intelligent six-year-old girl enjoying: Rascal, by Sterling North. "My best friend loved this when she was your age."

"Aunt Daenne? She doesn't like to read."

"No, not Daenne. My best friend is called Primavera Visconti."

"Is she all grown up now?"

"Yes."

"Does she have children?"

"No, not yet. She's not married, either, and she's a doctor who works in Australia, where she's trying to put the environment back the way it was."

"Ohhh! Does she get to work with plants and animals all day long?" The nature center had made an impact on my little niece.

"Yes. Some of them are microscopic, though."

"She's _lucky. _Umm—what are her favorite colors?"

"Yellow, blue, and green, but also red, orange, brown and purple. She likes all colors, really."

"But yellow, blue and green best?"

"Yes."

"What are your favorites, Uncle Richard?"

"Black and white. Now, what are you going to get for your second choice, since you have your book?"

"I don't know…" I turned to the task of helping her decide.

There was a bracelet there I would have like to buy for Primavera, with stones in strong warm colors and a polished ammonite, but we didn't have the sort of relationship where I could buy her jewelry. Yet. Getting the bracelet only to tuck it away in a drawer in the hope that someday I could give it to her seemed… deeply pathetic. There would never be a dearth of things to gift her with then, anyway. The other kids had gradually come in, all happy and excited, and we finished up in the shop on schedule, and went out to eat our lunches. All of us had a good appetite, with room to spare for ice cream.

It was after two when I got all of us back to the dock, full of good ice cream and contentment. The boat had been fixed for a couple of hours, but rather than cut our visit to the center short, Ed and I had agreed that he would come back and pick us up. I thought that he and the others had been just as glad to have some kid-free time on the boat, too.

As soon as I stepped on board, I thought, _Uh-oh_. It wasn't just the expressions on the faces of the adults; it was what happened to the kids. We were back in the emotional Maelstrom. I hadn't realized how negative the atmosphere was until then. It was like a small black hole, sucking every positive feeling into it. I watched and listened as Ed's children tried to share the pleasure and excitement of their morning with my brother and his wife, and were rebuffed with lukewarm interest. Elyse's "That's nice, dear," was not an invitation to share more.

Margali and Jonathan didn't even try to tell their parents about it. Their faces had slammed shut. I'd seen how open and happy they'd been, only moments before. Now they were trying to make themselves as small as possible.

I looked at George. Evidently he'd been drinking steadily since at least noon. Boats and alcohol do not, in my opinion, mix. And I did not like the way in which Margali and Jonathan watched his every move, as if he might explode at any moment.

What was going on in my brother's house? He had been a heavy drinker for years; had it been full-blown alcoholism? I had the distinct impression that this was not a new situation, that his children had been watching him very carefully for far longer than the week since George's exposure. What had he been like to live with? I was shamed by the realization that I had tracked his expenditures on alcohol and not thought deeply about what it had meant.

_Yes, let him go to prison_, I thought. _Get him out of the place where his children have to live and breathe and grow._ Some times no father at all is the preferable situation.

I helped Margali and Jon into their float vests, got into my own as we pulled away from the dock, and checked to make sure the other kids were wearing theirs.

I went forward to where Edward was steering, and saw he had on a stoic expression. "Ed, what's going on?"

"I think it's just as well you were off the boat for a couple of hours, Richard. Some things got said that you didn't need to hear."

"I can imagine."

"I took your part. For whatever that's worth."

"Thank you."

He was struggling with something. "You may have been wondering why I pushed for this weekend."

"Now that you mention it…."

"I wanted it for George's sake. I wanted him to remember what life was like before... Because what he said struck a chord. 'I didn't want the job.'" Edward quoted. "I never wanted mine. It was their idea, Mom's and Dad's. They pushed me into it, and I—didn't fight them. It wasn't as if I had any other plans. So here I am…" He shook his head.

It seemed like Ed had had about enough, and I wanted to think, so I left him and surveyed the other adult Genet-Yorks. Mother was reading an Imagist text, which boded ill. Her religion did not make her a happier person; studying it made her harsher and stiffer. Elyse and Daenne were browsing over an article on trends, and talking about the newly fashionable coyote furs, coyotes having been recently declared a vermin animal, legal to kill without penalty. Isabelle was gazing out over the water, in silence.

What had gone wrong with my family? What had I been blind to? It wasn't just George and his drinking. Whatever it was affected everyone. Clearly this wasn't a new state of affairs. I'd been seeing the traces of it for over a decade, but this was the first time I'd seen all of them together without care providers or entertainment systems, in a setting that threw them into direct contact, unbuffered. Away from these people, the kids had been so happy, so full of wonder, great to be around. My extended family was falling apart on its own.

My mother had come up behind me. She made me jump for once, instead of the other way around. "So you see it now," she spat. "You see what you've done to us."

I _wanted_ to bite her head off verbally. The only way in which I was responsible for this situation was in exposing George. The little games I played with gifts were exactly that. Little. I was not to blame for the disharmony, the disunion between these husbands and wives, or their children. I turned to confront my mother in anger, but I caught myself. Margali's small solemn face was turned toward me.

What was the problem here? Negativity, division, self-centeredness. If I decided to get into an argument with Mom, I would only be adding to it, and reinforcing her opinion of me. I could instead choose to behave differently.

"Hey!" I raised my voice, and addressed the kids. "Do you remember what they said about indigenous species around the bay? I've got a scope here. Rick, you bought an analysis unit, didn't you? Let's get a water sample and try it out."

Distracting the kids was mutually beneficial; it distracted me, too. We spent a few hours bird watching, talking, playing with their new stuff, until George broke our peace. Margali opened Rascal, and vanished mentally into WWI-era America, emerging periodically to ask about things in the book that she'd never heard of. She was the sort of child who can never just sit and read. Her little hands were kept busy with something as she read.

"Uncle Richard?" Margali tugged at my sleeve, and handed me something. Two somethings. I looked at what she'd given me. Two short lengths of colorful braided cord, which I could not identify.

"They're friendship bracelets," she explained. "I made them, for you and your friend Primavera. See, my friend Odette and I learned how," she waved her arm, where a similar cord encircled her wrist, "and to make it right, you use two of your favorite colors and two of your friend's, and when you see it, you think of your friend. And she thinks of you. Um. I only know how to do four colors, not five, so I picked teal because it's blue and green both. Do you…think she'll like it?"

I took a closer look at the two cords, where black, yellow, white and teal wound around each other in a simple herringbone sort of pattern. There was a loop at one end and two strands to tie it at the other. "I think she'll love it. These are beautiful, Margali. Thank you. Will you help me put mine on?"

"Sure!" She flushed with pleasure, and her nimble fingers went to work.

When she was finished, I kissed her on the forehead, buttoned the other bracelet in my pocket, and said, "I'll send Primavera's to her on Monday, and I'll tell her all about today and who made this for her. Thank you again." I wound up giving Primavera a bracelet from that day, after all.

My bladder had been telling me that it was too full, and I got up to visit the head. I was returning when George called out, "Is that what's next, Richard? Is that how you're going to complete the ruin of my life?" He was not sober.

I stopped in my tracks, and turned to face him. He lurched toward me, and while some of his unsteadiness was caused by the movement of the boat, some of it was alcohol. "You're going to steal my—."

"George!" I said with force, but I tried to keep it quiet. "I'm not stealing anything from you. Now just—Isabelle, can you?" _Calm him down,_ I meant to say, but she was not responding.

"Talking to you," blared George, "is a mistake. What I ought to do is pound the _shit_ out of you."

"George!" I tried again. "All the kids are watching. Think about what you're doing." Elyse had gone for Ed, I saw. Everybody else was fixed on us. That scared shut-down look was back on the faces of Margali and Jonathan. They looked sick.

"You little prick!" snapped George, and took a swing at me.

George was about twenty centimeters taller than I was, and weighed about half again as much as I did, but he did not have muscles built up in three gravities worth of pressure, bones stronger than concrete, and a nano-processor handling his reflexes. Nor did he have almost three years worth of martial arts training, as I did. Good physical therapy, you see. I could have taken him apart and swabbed the deck with him. But I am not a bully.

I dodged his fist, but as I tried to get by him so I didn't have my back to the water, his belt buckle got caught in my float vest. His weight carried us over the side, into the chilly, turbid waters of the bay.

We sank, and sank fast. I was wearing a float vest, but George was not, and our combined weight was more than one vest alone could buoy up. He was fighting, too, and while yes, he was fighting to free himself and swim to the surface, he was also fighting _me,_ while I struggled to slip out of the vest. I had a secret; I didn't need that vest as much as he did. I could breathe water. At least for a while.

I have artificial lungs, which can take in oxygen in conditions that would defeat living human lungs. Water is among those conditions.

We were still sinking, and a current was dragging us out to sea. I struck George right in the face, to make him stop thrashing in all directions. I must have got him right on the nose, as red bloomed around us in the water. Another wriggle, and I was loose. George shot to the surface, because of my float vest. He went up like a cork from a champagne bottle, and I was left to beat my way up.

Under laboratory conditions, which is to say, in nice, clean, pure, warm water that's oxygenated, a human being with artificial lungs can breathe for about an hour before they get tired. Water is heavy stuff, and pulling it in and pushing it back out is exhausting. It was taking so long… Minutes passed, as I fought the current.

I was not going to panic. I wasn't. I kicked and stroked. There was air up there, and dry blankets, hot showers and pulmonary clinicians with kind hands who would clean out the residue of this little adventure. It seemed an eternity since I had freed myself from George. More than five minutes, perhaps ten.

These were not laboratory conditions, and I was suffering. The water was cold and filthy; there was chemical sludge, dead fish, sewage, silt, fertilizer run-off, and a lot of nasty bacteria in it. I knew this for certain because of Rick's analysis unit, which had been edifying. The cold would send me into shock and the contaminants would coat the gas exchanges, gradually clogging them, suffocating me. They also tasted foul.

I had only a few minutes left before I would fail, I could tell. Being able to breathe water had a disadvantage; the water weighed me down. I broke the surface, and found I could not call for help; the water stifled my voice. I coughed up some, tried again, waved. Where was the boat? My eyes stung from the dirty water.

"There he is, there he is!" shouted Mike, and soon I was on the deck of our boat, where I hawked a couple of liters of water back into the bay, while someone wrapped a blanket around me. George was yammering, "You see! You see? He tried to kill me."

I hawked up another couple of liters, and looked at him. "Yeah. Right. And I decided to commit suicide so I could enjoy it even more. George, will you please grow up?"

Mother put an end to the fight. "George. You are behaving shamefully. Stop it. And Richard—."

I waited. What would she say?

"You are not fooling _me._"

I guess it would have been asking too much to ask her to be sympathetic. There was no way I could have survived fifteen minutes underwater, as I had, without violating the precepts of Imagism.

That cut the day short. After I had showered, flushed out my lungs with a few liters of drinking water, and talked to my local health care providers, I decided that I could wait until Monday to see a doctor. The weekend was not to be cut short; Edward had worked to patch things up, and it would have left the kids with a traumatic finish to the day stuck in their memories, had it all ended there. So I ate dinner and drank a lot of hot tea and made conversation.

Mother had absented herself for much of the evening to walk in the woods as she once had with Dad. I respected that. The sun porch was dear to me for the same reason, for the moment that he and had shared, when I had some hope…

George and I carefully avoided one another, and we got through the evening. I helped the kids roast marshmallows and put them together with chocolate and graham crackers. It wasn't a bad evening, and it gradually wound down to bedtime.

Our cabin there at the bay had six rooms, (four bedrooms, one and only one bathroom and toilet). I thought trying to fit fifteen into it was a horrible idea, and I _like_ the old cabin. There was a perpetual line for the toilet, giving new meaning to the phrase, "not a pot to piss in". There were no pots. My family did not cook. We're not quite upper-upper-class enough for that. I organized the kids into washing and cleaning up in the kitchen, which relieved the bottleneck somewhat.

As regards the sleeping arrangements, you may be wondering where, if each of the married couples had a room and Mother shared with the oldest grand-daughter, Ellie, the other seven kids slept.

It was crowded, but the living room had fold-outs—the sofa could sleep three— there were a few cots, so the two sets of parents each had their youngest in with them, and the little utilities closet had a lumpy single with an ancient featherbed, that I remembered with nostalgic fondness. It was the warmest room, the featherbed made it very comfortable, and I just arranged myself so my own lumps fit into the bed's peculiarities.

I had to face the prospect of sharing a bedroom and bed with Daenne. Sex was unlikely under the circumstances. Too many people around and not enough soundproofing. But no: I was surprised, albeit pleased, at least on the physical level. We were quiet about it. Afterward, she wanted to talk.

"Richard—doesn't getting all of us together like this make you think about wanting to start our own family?"

It was almost as big a surprise as Mother's request that I defend George.

Where the hell did _this_ come from?

"Well, no, because for the entire day, you showed absolutely no interest in any of the kids."

"I did, too!"

"I couldn't tell. You made no effort to talk to them, to do anything with them, to get to know them, and you were making nasty remarks about me only this morning. Now you want to bear my children?"

"What I said this morning?"

"That I'd be at home with the bugs and snakes."

"That was a joke!"

"It didn't sound like one from where I was standing." Why had I thought marrying this woman was a good idea?

"I meant I was joking with Issy and Elyse!"

"But I was meant to hear it."

"Do you always have to…"she began to snap at me, "…no, I'm sorry. You always do answer like that. You always pull apart every single little thing, and it's… just how you are."

She was trying to make peace. "But seeing all the kids, and you're so good with them…"she let it trail off.

"I think," I said carefully, "that this requires some discussion." I did not want to have a family with Daenne. I knew it was only a matter of time before this union disintegrated, and a child would be very permanent. Half an hour later, I was mad enough to take my pillow and go in search of somewhere else to sleep.

Through a series of carefully phrased questions, I had discovered that Daenne's idea of motherhood was essentially the same as the rest of my family—once you had a child, you turned it over to the care providers and went on with your own life. Except that you then had a pretty little doll to dress up and shop for. That was not my idea of parenthood.

There was no chance of any little birth control 'failures', though. I had decided, long before I ever had the chance to make a baby, that I wanted to have control of the process. I had a thermal bead implanted in my scrotum, where it not only imperceptibly kept the temperature too high for sperm motility, it also ensured I would never suffer from frostbite of the testicles. And the pre-nups had very harsh things to say about any child conceived with outside help. It could be grounds for an immediate divorce.

My feet took me to the utilities closet, where the lumpy single waited for me. Or so I thought. When I turned on the light, I woke Margali, who knuckled her eyes against the brightness of the light. "Uncle Richard?" she inquired sleepily. "What is it?"

"It's okay, Margali. Do you mind going and sharing with your Aunt Daenne, and letting me sleep here?"

"Why?"

"Well, I talk in my sleep, and when I have nightmares, I yell and thrash around. I don't like to keep her up." Margali didn't need to know that I had been fighting with Daenne.

"I'm sorry. Are there monsters in your dreams?"

"Sometimes."

"I like dreaming about monsters. Some of them…" She yawned and got up.

"Here, take your pillow and your robe." I handed them to her.

"Thank you." She stumbled out.

I got into the bed, which was not as comfortable as I remembered. The mattress had been replaced and the featherbed was gone. I made the best of it.

The fight had keyed me up too much for immediate sleep. I lay there and let my thoughts drift. In one thing, Daenne and I had actually been in accord; that day had made us both think about being parents some day. I had truly enjoyed the time I'd spent with the kids, and I resolved to treat the promise I had made to Margali and Jonathan as a sacred vow, which I have kept.

What might our children, Primavera's and mine, look like, be like, should I ever have that happiness? Probably bright-haired, bright-eyed and way too clever for their britches…It would be nice to bring my own family here, but first I would get an architect to add a bathroom. Or three. Of course, then she and I would share the big bedroom with the view of the water. That would be wonderful. I fell asleep eventually.

The weekend was curtailed after all. George had to go to the emergency room the next morning. He came down with pneumonia, amoebic dysentery, and hepatitis as a result of our swim. I didn't even come down with a sniffle. Germs know better than to mess with me.

A happy result of his illness was this: the attending physician diagnosed George's incipient cirrhosis of the liver while she was attending to his hepatitis and told him he had to stop drinking so heavily or he might die. He wisely (if uncharacteristically) chose to cut back drastically on the hard stuff.

George was thrown to the wolves. Isabelle escaped indictment by turning state's evidence, and then she escaped to the Coast, leaving their children behind with their grandmother. The Directorship families were furious with Ed for promoting George in the first place, but they rallied in defense of A.L.-Bion. I was named CFO, and accepted with a suitably heavy, sincere speech about how I would do everything in my power to restore A.L.-Bion to what it had been.

My mother was dissatisfied. She blamed me.

"I don't like it, Richard."

"Neither do I."

"Are you sure?"

We were engaged in Stare-Down again. I had forgotten how it made my head hurt.

"Mother. _I_ did not commit those crimes! _I_ did _not _set George up. He did it. He did it all. I did not tell Isabelle to take off, leaving Margali and Jonathan in your custody, either. All I did was find out what he was up to before everything collapsed. George is going to prison, yes! I don't expect you to thank me for that, but the least you can do is not accuse me of things I didn't and would never do." It was the truth. I suppose I could have warned George not to dig himself in, or told Edward, years before, but why?

She was silent a moment. "You are right. Yet I wish it wasn't you who found him out. It makes me wonder what else you may find, and about whom."

"I don't know what I may find. But no innocent person will find me singling them out." I kept my word on that, too.

"Good. I hope it may stay that way." She turned to go.

"Mother!" She stopped and looked at me. "What would it take to make you look at me with something other than contempt? To—to bless me with some maternal affection?"

"I don't know, Richard. I have asked God that, many times. He has never answered me."

"If you weren't tied up in your own aspect of God, you might be able to see Him in other places." Another perfect exit line I didn't use. I suppose I still wanted her to love me.

That's a hope I've given up now.

For good.

The whole process of going through indictment, trial, conviction, and sentencing took months. It always does. While I of course did not defend George, I did recommend a lawyer to him, and of course George ignored my advice. I think the natural reaction to my brother George is to pinch the bridge of one's nose and shake one's head. He was forced to sell his shares in the family boat and the house at Gloster Bay—they were the only property he had that was not already mortgaged. I bought them, and at rather more than fair market value, too.

Eventually George went to prison, and he's likely to stay there for the next twenty years. The facility where he's doing his time is one of those 'country club' white collar prisons, with swimming pools and tennis courts. A minimum security palace, lest you think he's suffering in a crumbling, rat-infested hole somewhere.

An unhappy side effect of George's exposure was the new atmosphere of distrust which now pervaded A.L.-Bion. It even extended to me, which was both unfair and unnecessary. I was saddled with an 'overseeing' director, whose job it was to keep an eye on what I was up to. I wasn't the only one— all the heads, Sales, Service, Personnel, Science, and Public Relations had a director breathing down their necks. The new policy did not add to the smooth and efficient running of things. In fact, it detracted from it, as all the departments had to keep their directors informed of, and in some cases educated up to understanding, what was going on in the department.

My burden's name was Richmond-Stanley. I knew him from those lovely home schooling years. Theodore Richmond-Stanley, who is now the Executive Director of A.L.-Bion. Old Stanley's only genetic child was Rejoice—the girl who died in a murder-suicide at fourteen—so he had adopted Theodore, his wife's son, and turned the Stanley directorship over to him. I didn't remember him with any warmth. He had been a peevish, whiny brat who'd been through too many of his mother's divorces.

He did indeed understand finance and accounting, but that was small consolation to me. I could not stand him.

I had been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, once I'd read his curriculum vitae and learned he had a half-decent brain and a fairly respectable education. His competence would have gone a long way toward reconciling me to his presence, but it didn't go far enough.

Our introductory meeting took place in the Four-Squared restaurant, under Edward's supervision. Ed meant well. He wanted the initial meeting to be a good one and the working relationship between Richmond and me to be a success. Elias Morton-Bishop was there, too. He was still the chief accountant under the CFO— George before, now me. I didn't want to keep a chief accountant who hadn't caught on to what George had done, and I would have fired him if I could. He was from a Directorship family, though, and I couldn't. He knew what I thought of him. I had expressed my misgivings to Ed, and Bishop had found out. I'd made an enemy of him. He would bear watching.

Any chance of an amiable relationship between Richmond and me was in danger before he said hello to me. The way he ordered his lunch injured the chance further, and by the time he asked me an offensive personal question over coffee, that chance was dead in the dust.

His suit was cheap and ugly. That was the first thing I noticed.

There is no crime in owning and wearing a cheap suit; even a cheap and ugly suit. A man may do so for any number of reasons. He may be too poor to afford a better one. Richmond wasn't broke. He may be so rich he doesn't give a damn. Richmond didn't have the money or the attitude. He may wear one so rarely the expense isn't worth it, or he may be indifferent to materialistic things. Richmond wore one every day and he was keenly aware of the consumer goods around him. That was the cue I picked up on—he had, and still has, a calculation program going in his head at all times. I could see him assessing the cost of everything—the watch I wore, the restaurant furnishings, the menu. He was obvious about it. Obvious to me, anyway.

Richmond was pathologically cheap. Such was my diagnosis, and later events proved me right. He mentally added up the cost of everything I was wearing—I saw him look, and I saw him finish his analysis. Admittedly, I was doing the same thing to him, but_ I_ did _not_ permit _my _mouth to make even the slightest superior smirk, as his did. Not only was broadcasting his opinion rude, it was proof he wasn't as superior as he thought he was. I shook his hand anyway.

Then there was the next blow to our potential relationship: how he placed his lunch order. He was debating over his selection—soup, sandwich, or salad, the cheapskate's specials—when Edward announced that this lunch was on him. Then Richmond ordered the clonal lobster, one of the most expensive choices on the menu. I had several meals with him over the next six months, and he was definitely under socialized when it came to dining-out etiquette. If someone else was treating, he ordered lavishly. If he was paying for himself, he ordered frugally. If it was his turn to pick up the tab, and he couldn't get out of it, he steered the group to the cheapest restaurant that would be acceptable.

But the deciding factor that turned me against him, the death blow, was the question he asked me over the coffee, or in my case, tea. I'm sort of naturally caffeinated to begin with, so I avoid coffee.

He led up to it subtly. "I've heard a lot about your surgeries."

"Yes, I'm sure that subject gets talked about, A.L.-Bion being as Imagist as it is." I replied.

"The treatments must have been really thorough. I can tell that just from how I remember you, growing up."

"They had to be thorough. I chose my doctor very carefully, and I got what I wanted."

"How much did it all cost?"

My jaw wanted to drop, but I had a mouthful of tea and it would have been messy. Had he just outright and nakedly asked me how much my transformation cost?

How much had it cost me to grow up deformed? _That_ was a much more relevant question.

I gave him a long, silent look, considered all the things I could say, while I swallowed my tea and allowed Edward and Bishop to take in what Richmond had just said. I let the moment stretch out, and let them give him looks askance. I waited for him to realize how he had sounded, and what people would think of that.

Then I answered, very gently, "More than money."

He flushed and stammered, "I'm sorry. I did-dn't mean that the way it sounded."

"I'm sure you didn't," I graciously returned. The pleasure of being rude is as nothing to the much more refined and exquisite pleasure of being perfectly and absolutely civil, _while at the same time _letting someone know exactly what you think of them.

So Richmond became my burden, and I had to bear him. A small matter. His job was to watch me do mine to be sure I did it honestly. Since I am honest, and would have been whether he was watching or not, he had a very boring time, all around.

At that point, I thought it was all going well, more or less on schedule. Primavera and I were talking again. I called to tell her how George's defeat was progressing, and she told me all about Australia, where she was doing things with and to microbes. Neither of us so much as mentioned my marriage, or Daenne.

I had no reason to stay married to Daenne any longer, and several reasons to be free again. Daenne didn't get the Neville directorship after all. Isabelle left her proxy, as well as Margali and Jonathan, with my mother. Until either she or my mother died, that was how things would remain.

We had been married for almost a year. Sex had become ever more infrequent and impersonal, and we were having some very ugly fights. Some advice for you: Never marry anyone whose I.Q. is nearly a hundred points less than yours. I hadn't realized how big a mistake it was. Daenne could not argue rationally, which put me at a disadvantage. She called me names and accused me of talking down to her all the time, or, conversely, of talking over her head. I could never end an argument for once and for all. I would think I had won, but then she would keep on bringing the same thing up again and again.

I was not going to breathe the word 'divorce' until Daenne said it first, or until I was absolutely certain that she would agree. The waiting didn't help my temper any. I was really looking forward to my potential future marital disagreements with Primavera. I knew from having been her patient what her fighting style was like. I wouldn't win all the time, but Primavera argued with reasoning to back her, and used a more creative array of insults.

In the meantime, I was being unpleasant to Daenne. I was not unfaithful to her— it struck me as being a bad habit to get into. I was keeping my behavior and language from actually being abusive in any way. The lawyer in me, I guess, being prudent.


	5. Part Five: Scrambling

**Part Five: Scrambling**

Then. Oh, then. Something happened which threw off all my plans. A catastrophe.

Edward died long before I was ready.

The directorship families were economizing after the Big Bail-Out of A.L.-Bion, the Genet-Yorks especially, but one luxury Edward kept was his box at the stadium. Eight weeks ago, on a Sunday, he took all four boys, the two from Elyse's first marriage, Mike and Thomas, and the two they had together, Edward jr., and Richard, to see a play-off game. Their daughters, Elyse jr., who's called Ellie, and Cecy, were with their mother, at home. Ironically, he had done it partly at my suggestion that he should spend more time with his children.

The stadium was fairly new, only about a year old. It was state of the art, and all of that. But it had been built on a piece of land which had an underground network of caves. While normally the caves were full of water, this had been a very dry year. As the water dropped and the caves emptied, the stadium got to be too heavy for the ground to bear its weight.

The entire east half of the stadium collapsed, and part of the west went with it. Ed's box was directly on the east side of the fifty-meter line.

Ed was killed. Elyse's oldest son, Michael, was fatally injured and died on the way to the hospital. Ed jr. and Rick were both critically injured. Elyse's second son, Tom, escaped unharmed, because he had been in the extreme western part of the building talking to a girl.

It was hours before we knew that, though. You can imagine what the disaster site was like. Hundreds dead, thousands injured. It was awful.

I went to identify my brother's body, some thirty odd hours after the collapse. Elyse, my mother, and Daenne all were at the hospital with the boys. The living take precedence over the dead and the children over the father. The way of the world.

He wasn't in the morgue, where I would have looked at him on a digital screen many rooms and floors removed, but in a temporary cold pavilion set up in the stadium parking garage. A medic from the police department took me to a long stretcher table, slit the sterile grey foam cocoon with a heat knife, and peeled the soft wadding away from Edward's face. I nodded, took out my Powermod, called up Ed's genetic profile, and handed it to her. She took an instrument from her belt, touched it to his cheek, and his pattern bloomed in light on its small screen.

She compared the two. "I'm sorry," she said. "Would you like a moment?"

"Yes," I said. She went off to find someone else's dead, and I tried to sort out

my thoughts. I couldn't work up much anger at him, even though he'd died far too prematurely for my plans. I wasn't especially grieved, either. I felt worse about Michael, poor kid. He and I weren't that close, not like some of my other nieces and nephews, but he'd asked for my advice on academic matters. We had gone over his college applications only the week before. I was going to miss him a hell of a lot.

Ed had been so much older than I, almost eleven years older, that our worlds hadn't really overlapped until I came back home. I had wanted everything he had simply because he had it, but what had he had, in the end?

The executive directorship of a company in trouble, a brother who had stolen from him, and an unhappy wife. He had screwed a lot of women who meant nothing to him once he'd put it back in his pants, and fathered ten children, five of whom got no more of him than half their genes and some of his money. The other five got only a little more than that. He came into the world healthy and whole, and he had been good-looking. When he had learned his life was endangered by heart disease, he had not recanted his Imagism and sought treatment. He had _wanted_ to die young. I didn't.

I was going to have more than he had. I was going to have the executive directorship and do things he never dreamt of. Daenne was unhappy, but that marriage was about to end, and then there would be Primavera. I wanted her even as I wanted the directorship, as I had wanted a healthy, normal body, as I have always wanted anything I was determined to have. If there were any children, they would be hers and mine, no others, and I would miss nothing of their lives. Ed had been idle. He had been shallow. He had been hedonistic; he had sought and found his pleasures but mislaid his happiness. I had hated him because I could not be him. Now that I could be him, I was not going to be anything like him.

His death had left more space in the world for me, though, and if I were to get the Executive Directorship, I was going to have to hustle. As I went over to the hospital to pick Daenne up, I thought over my possible strategies and analyzed my chances. The CFO—me, in this case—becomes acting ED if the current Executive Director dies or is otherwise incapacitated.

The directors have eight weeks to pick a new ED, and the ED must be from a directorship family. Any adult can apply; then they have to convince the directors to vote for them. They have to make a formal presentation of their qualifications and plans for the future of A.L.-Bion at some point during that time. Informally, a lot of conniving, bargaining, bribery, and blackmail goes on as well. The final event before the vote is a very formal party on the eighth Friday night, thrown by A.L.-Bion for the directorship families, during which all the candidates make a last effort to win support where they can, and then on Monday, after a weekend to sober up and generally recover, the directors vote, and the majority rules.

For those eight weeks, I would be acting as ED. It was up to me to find enough support. I ran over the current directors in my mind. Most of them were of my parents' generation, and hard-line Imagists. That was a stroke against me, the heretic proponent of and living tribute to the skills of modern medicine and surgery.

Ed's death also left the Genet-York directorship open. My mother held the Neville proxy; therefore she was ineligible for our family's vote as well. Elyse wasn't likely to want to exercise it anytime soon, and George was in prison. That left only one adult Genet-York other than me: Edward's now thirty-year-old premarital son Steven, the doctor in Uganda. He wasn't very interested in A.L.-Bion as anything other than a source of donations for his clinic. I'm one of his major contributors, have been for years. He's a smart guy. We share a special bond, both being family embarrassments and non-Imagists. The Genet-York directorship would be mine, whether I got the ED or not.

I had to consider the directors carefully. I already mentioned the major points against me: I am not Imagist, and I not only approve of surgery, but I had a lot of it done. But I had some advantages, also. They respected my abilities, my honesty, and my work ethics. I made sure they knew what role Norfolk, Lovell and Radcliffe played in my successes—my crew was another point in my favor.

It was not enough. I needed a hole card, and as I drove I realized what, or who, it had to be. Doctor Primavera Visconti, XD, Nobel Prize nominee, the famous and wealthy daughter of a famous man. Without her, I was building on thin ice with brittle glass. It made a mess of my plan to make amends with the Head of Science position. Plus, the timing was bad in another way. I was still married to Daenne.

I would have to get Primavera signed on, and fast, if I was to get the Executive Directorship. And I was going to have to be honest and open about it if I wanted to keep her friendship, let alone marry her. It made it so much more difficult for me. If I attempted to make her a tool, she would sooner or later find that out. It was damned inconvenient that I loved her.

I had gotten over resenting it, though.

Speaking of marriage and Daenne, when I got to the hospital and went up to the floor where my nephews' room was, I got a break. I overheard a conversation between Daenne and Elyse as they sat in the visitor's lounge. I will summarize it. She delivered a long and detailed account of what she disliked about being married to me. The name 'Frankenstein' was used. She made it clear that she had never been able to set aside the memory of what I had been, and that she should never had married me to begin with. It wasn't a huge shock.

Daenne ended her litany with, "And the worst of it is, he will never, not ever, let me go. It isn't as if he was in love with me—not the real me— but the idea of me he got back when we were home-schooled together. I never thought I would say this about my second marriage, I thought it would be forever. But I thought that the first time, too. I want a divorce! I want to be free."

Could I have gotten a better cue? I stepped into the lounge, and Daenne jumped in her seat. "Richard!"

"I just caught the end of that." I said. "And if that's what you want, you shall have it. You're right—and that dream was too much to base a life on. I'm prepared to be generous above and beyond the pre-nup; I wouldn't want you to worry. Radcliffe will handle my side of it. Perhaps Elyse has a friend who can recommend a divorce lawyer for you? I'll move out tonight. You can keep the condominium and most of the furniture as part of the settlement. I'll just stay a few minutes to see the boys, and then I'll go get my things together." I was sad and heavy outwardly, of course, but I was grinning underneath.

Both Eddie and Rick were out of it still, which was for the best as they were both…pretty badly messed up. Their lives weren't in any danger, but I had a strong premonition of what would follow as Elyse and her Imagism conflicted with common sense and the hospital.

If I had favorites among my nieces and nephews, Rick would be one of them. He wasn't named for me, but for my grandfather, his great-granddad, who had been a sharp old guy. It was as if the name had imparted the genes for wits along with it; Rick was bright, even as I was, and I liked our interchanges. Eddie was a lot like Ed, but I had taught him the fundaments of reasoning over the years, and I thought he would do better than his father had.

It's sad, but I knew all of my brothers' children better than their fathers did. Perhaps even better than their mothers. I paid them more attention. I spent more time on them, what with studying them, observing them, writing, cliking, calling and talking to them, thinking of what to get them for their birthdays, than their fathers did.

I had come to care for them, more deeply than I ever thought I would. It had started out as a way for me to show my continuing interest and involvement in the family in general; then it had turned into a game of one-upmanship and power, when I realized what effect it had on them all. Now it seemed a tragedy, with Edward dead, George in jail, and Isabelle fled. More inconvenient attachments. I had to sever some of them, somewhereLove is_ bad _for business

The first week after Edward's death passed by quickly. I moved back into the executive apartment complex I lived in when I first moved back home. I spent a lot of time and energy keeping A.L.-Bion going, and told my desire to become the Executive Director to Primavera, who was having troubles of her own down in Australia. They were getting the rain we weren't; areas which had been desert for thousands of years were getting rainfall like Seattle, and it was causing problems, such as mudslides.

On Thursday, there were the funerals for Edward and Michael. It was a good opportunity to look over the directors, as all of them—indeed, almost every member of the Directorship families—attended. Imagism is a conservative creed and the Directorship families conservative by nature. The funeral was awash with somber colors.

Black is too chic, these days, for mourning others' lives, or so I gather. I saw forest green, maroon, navy blue, beige, deep brown, purple, white, and just about every shade of grey, but no black. I myself wore a charcoal grey suit, with a medium grey shirt and a tone-on-tone grey tie. Monochrome works.

The one exception to all this visible display of respect was Elyse's mother, Jacquelinette Woodhouse. She wore a cream dress and jacket with a bright teal pattern. She explained loudly from time to time that at her age, eighty-seven, she didn't like to be reminded of funerals. She said it fourteen times in my hearing. She might have done me the favor of staying away, in that case.

The minister was adequate to the occasion. I tuned her out and pondered on the lives of Ed and Michael. Stephen had come from Uganda for his father's funeral; there he stood in silence. There was a memory—I might have witnessed his conception.

I remember being five years old, awakened by some noise or other, limping down the hall to the rec room, to see where it was coming from, to find my big brother Edward doing something funny with Nyssa, who was staying with us. "What are you doing _that _for?" I asked. More or less nine months later, Stephen was born.

At the time, after they had gotten over their shock, Ed took me back down the hall, saying it was nothing, only don't tell Mom and Dad. I said that if it was nothing, why shouldn't I tell? And if I shouldn't tell, then I wouldn't—if he would tell me what they were doing. I liked having his attention, I didn't get it often.

So he explained sex to me. When he was done, I said, "I still don't see why you'd _want_ to do that" That was a memory of Ed that could bring a genuine smile to my face. That was nice.

Mike had been a loud bundle of jealousy and temper when he joined our family. He'd been only two and a half, jealous of his new stepfather, his little brother, _and_ the coming baby. He was usually in a really foul mood. One morning, he'd thrown a piece of toast at me. I threw it back. The incredulous look of shock on his face had turned to glee, as I engaged him in a food fight. What a mess! And now he was dead…I was brooding too much, I could feel my eyes beginning to sting.

I turned my thoughts to the other attendees, the people to whom I would soon be announcing my candidacy for the Executive Directorship, those I would be competing against, and those whose votes I would need.

There were only three directors under fifty, not counting Isabelle, who gave my mother the Neville proxy.

One was Bock Ingram. He had his doctorate in chemistry, and I knew he was all for expansion and change. His sister Kirby and brother McKean had been home-schooled with me. I had been cultivating his friendship for a few months now. His vote would be mine, but it would come with a price tag on it. I could find out what it read.

Another was Theodore Richmond-Stanley, of course. He had contributed as little as possible to the bail-out, and made the most noise about it. I liked him even less than I had before.

The only other youngish director was Warren Hastings, Edward's best buddy. Predictably, he was a lot like Ed. In fact, Hastings even saw one of Ed's part-time 'girlfriends' on a regular basis. Janine Shore was her name. She was a 'psychologist-counselor' for A.L.-Bion's executives. I privately thought of her as an over-priced fake in all of her professions. Hastings himself wasn't well known to me. I didn't know how he might vote.

Nor did I know who else might apply. Any of the directors might; none of them might. It was something to think about.

Radcliffe was philosophical about my separation from Daenne. "You had no business marrying her in the first place. She's a fluffy duckling. Cute, sweet, and lightweight." And then she went ahead and got everything ready. It would be up to Daenne to get her act together and fulfill her part, and then it would be over.

On the weekend, I opted to stay at Elyse's with all the kids rather than spend it in the hospital. I went there every day during the week; I didn't need to give the two boys all Saturday and Sunday when there were five other kids who were getting ignored. Besides, I had a standing date with Margali and Jonathan for the weekends.

They had their care providers, but they needed attention from somebody who wasn't getting paid for it, too. So I taught the younger ones all about papier-mâché. For that alone, I think Elyse would forever hate me, but then I compounded matters by doing what I called intervening and what she called interfering.

Her son Tom, now her oldest living child, was going into a severe depression, since Ed his stepfather and all his other brothers were hurt or dead and he hadn't a scratch on him. No hope of medication for him, given the Imagism nonsense; but he needed something, at least counseling. I did what I could, and saw that he got a therapist. She didn't like it.

There was another problem, too. My niece Ellie, Edward and Elyse's oldest, who was just fourteen and a bundle of hormones. For some reason, she chose to fixate on me. All of a sudden, she became interested in what I had gone through, asked me lots of questions, hung on me all the time, and wanted to see me with my shirt off. I am not shy, but I am cautious. I remember many cases in history where an adolescent girl went off the deep end and got carried away with what she said or did. Think of Salem and the witch hunts, or early Christianity and all those teenage girl saints. I made sure I was never alone with her, for my own safety.

I got through the weekend unscathed somehow. Monday morning, I learned who was going to be the only other serious contender for the ED: Theodore Richmond-Stanley. His much-married mother, Margaret Beaufort-Richmond-Brown-Walker-Powell-Stanley, held the Beaufort directorship; no point in wooing her vote for me. I began to think over what his qualifications were, and what plans he might have in store for A.L.-Bion. One thing was for sure; he wouldn't be bribing votes with anything that would cost him actual money. If I chose to go that route, I wouldn't have to worry about a bidding war.

I also acquired another staffer for my personal team; William Catesby, formerly Ed's personal assistant. Any personal assistant Edward had was by necessity male, as despite all the anti-harassment laws, Ed seduced every female assistant who worked under him. I mean, for him. The under part came later…Catesby was a tall, pale young guy whose physical coordination hadn't quite caught up to his growth, meaning he was still scrawny, a little clumsy, and had an Adam's-apple like a knee in his neck. He even blushed whenever an attractive woman spoke to him. He had a passion for twentieth-century popular music of all kinds, and usually had something playing softly in the background, whether it was Duke Ellington, the Beatles, or Tori Amos. He can organize like few people I've ever met.

Bock Ingram and I were doing a delicate round of negotiations for his support, and I was beginning to suspect that I wouldn't want to pay his price. He was hinting that he wanted the Head of Science post. I had not actually mentioned it to Primavera yet, but as far as I was concerned, it was hers. I wanted and needed her there in it, and it was to be my gift to her. She was by far the better qualified of the two, and besides my other reasons, I also wanted her as someone who hadn't grown up in the A.L.-Bion environment, someone with a wider perspective. Bock was too much an insider for me; there had been too many members of directorship families given important jobs for which they were unsuited or unqualified—witness George and Morton-Bishop. The post was too great a reward for just one vote.

As the second week after Ed's death continued, I had a scare which lasted three days—Primavera dropped out of any and all communications, for no apparent reason. Then I learned that the area where her ecology center was, was enduring massive rainfall, flash floods, and mudslides. Those were three _horrible_ days. I was imagining her dead. I saw her, in my mind, buried by tons of debris, with silt clogging her lungs to the point where even the best artificials could not pull enough oxygen to preserve her life. I thought of sand grinding the corneas of her sweet dark eyes, and her voice silenced forever by mud, and I made myself ill with worry. Why must the people we love come into the world wearing such fragile bags of meat as bodies? Why not something more enduring?

When things finally became calm and she had leisure to answer, she told me that the house where she was staying had been destroyed in one of the slides, but there had been enough warning to evacuate. She and her two housemates were safe in a hotel. She had lost some of her clothes, but they rescued all the important things, such as books, keepsakes, jewelry, and one housemate's two meter boa constrictor. She had thought she lost her own pet cat, a friendly Abyssinian called Brulee, but he turned up alive and well two days later. The center she was working in might have to be abandoned also, and if it did, the project was likely to be terminated.

Once I hung up, I pondered on the workings of fate. It was as if God was trying to make up for the bad timing of Edward's death by ensuring that Primavera would be in search of a new job soon, when I had one for her.

On that Friday, things took an unexpected turn. I was visiting the hospital, and walked by Elyse out in the hallway just as she was telling off a doctor assigned to the boys. Her voice was shrill and harsh as she defended her Imagist beliefs. I was sick of Imagism several hundred times over, and sick of Elyse, and I would have just left when I recognized the doctor she was haranguing. He had been one of the army of medical professionals who worked on me throughout my transformation. His name was James Tyrell.

Suddenly, I knew. I knew exactly what I was going to do.

I arranged to meet Tyrell in the hospital parking lot later. I got there first and walked around the perimeter of it as I waited. The fringes of the lot were crumbling away, and tall weeds sprouted from the cracks. At some time in the past, two chain link fences had been installed back-to-back between that lot and the next. Stupid, pointless, and wasteful. The desiccated corpse of a small bird still seemed to writhe in pain and fear, caught with one foot pinched in the wires. The tiny vertebrae of its neck looked like beads. I felt a great sadness and sorrow for that little bird come over me. Every line of its body told how it had fought to free itself, and failed, and died. I walked away from it.

Tyrell showed up, and we went through all the usual hellos. Then I looked him straight in the eye, and asked him, "So. Exactly how strong are your principles?"

When Elyse returned to visit her sons that evening, they were both gone. No one would tell her where they were, or what had happened, or why.

I waited until the sedative they gave her took effect, and then I told her. They had to give her a second dose after that.

I had already left. I had more important things to do. Those last three hours had been full of activity and I anticipated more. Elyse was almost certainly calling in the authorities, her lawyers, and my mother.

I was prepared, however. I had put those hours to good use. I had called in an organization that was prepared to back me all the way. Even now, members were all over the hospital. I had most of my staff there, too, except for Catesby, who I had dispatched to meet the shuttle from Australia. Primavera was on it. One brief call to her was all it took to convince her to cross oceans and continents.

This was going to be a war, exactly my kind of war, and fought on my own turf. Elyse and her people were going to be outmaneuvered and outgunned. I felt I had my teeth into a throat and it tasted rich and salty. I tell you, I wanted to run through the hospital leaping and howling like a wolf.

Can you imagine what it must have been like when getting from Australia to here took over ten hours? Three hours and forty-five minutes after Primavera hung up, she was walking into my nephews' new room, and only an hour and a half of that was the actual flight.

I broke off from the story I was telling them about my own hospital stay to greet her. I hadn't known my eyes could be starved for the sight of anyone, until I looked at her then. She wasn't changed much; she had cut her hair short, chin-length. She looked a bit tired—she had been running from the mud slide only twenty-eight hours earlier.

For the last forty-five minutes or so, I had been stalling until she could get there. It hadn't been a waste. Elyse had called the police; I had called the media. Both had time to get set up. I had my own people set up a general live x-mit digital feed, so everybody on the outside could see and hear what was going on. I had a bone-conduction plug in one ear, so I could listen in on Elyse, her lawyers, and the police. Elyse wanted it treated as if it were a hostage situation. Fortunately the captain had more sense.

I had spent the time talking to the boys. They had no clue yet as to what was going on, and I meant to keep it that way until the last possible moment.

Which was at hand. Primavera looked and sounded as cheerful and casual as if she had just come in from sipping fresh limeade on the porch.

"Hello, Eddie. Hi, Rick. I'm Doctor Visconti. Your uncle called me in to consult on your treatment. I was his doctor—did he tell you about me?" Unrehearsed, unprompted, completely genuine—she was wonderful. Within two minutes, it was as if they'd known her forever.

"—I'm not going to tell you any more about what he was like as a patient. Except this: While he behaved worse than any other patient I've ever had, I've never known anyone with more strength, more courage, or more determination. Not even my dad. If you can be like your uncle, you can behave as badly as you want to." She looked at me. I nodded at the man I'd called in. He took it up from there.

"Edward. Richard. What's going to happen in the next few minutes is important. Very important. Up until now, you haven't been told everything about your injuries, or about the treatments available for them. Doctor Visconti is going to tell you now. After she does—and I ask you to listen very carefully to her—I am going to ask you both some questions. All right?"

"Yes," said Eddie.

"Uncle Richard? Is it okay?"

"Yes, Rick. This is serious stuff, but everybody here is on your side."

"Okay, then."

Primavera took up the thread. "First of all—," and she then explained everything to them, simply and clearly.

It had been too good an opportunity to pass up. The League for the Defense of the Rights of Minors had been trying to establish a legal precedent for intercession in a case where a parent denied a minor child medical care or treatment for a non-fatal condition, which, although not life-threatening, would have a lasting negative impact upon that child for the rest of his or her life. I had called them in, after I had obtained the hospital's consent and assistance. There were dozens of volunteers in the hospital right then, acting as blockades and extra security. The man who told my nephews what was going to happen was one of the Greater Advocates of the League. I'm a Lesser Advocate, myself. I do a lot of pro-bono work for them. They helped me once, remember? I never forgot. I'm loyal. I am as loyal and true as a mirror; one of those mirrors that enlarges. I return whatever I am shown, good or bad, help or injury, love or contempt, three times magnified.

If there had been a legal precedent, my brother George would have had medication and treatment for his neurohormone imbalance, done better in school and better in life, learned to control his impulses, and perhaps not gotten into the financial mess that sent him to prison.

If there had been a legal precedent, Rejoice Stanley would have had medication and treatment for her depression, the dark compulsion which led her to commit murder and then suicide might not have seized her, and she might still be alive.

If there had been a legal precedent, I—well, I've already told you enough about my own case.

I was right there, a relative close to the boys, a Lesser Advocate and a lawyer, I knew one of the doctors already on their case—Tyrell—and I also knew a Nobel Prize nominee who was willing to travel thousands of kilometers on a moment's notice to lend her authority to a good cause.

It was risky. We could all have been arrested, sued, lost our various licenses, and joined George in prison. Thus putting an end to all my ambitions. But I was betting it wouldn't come to that. I was right; Elyse caved. There were lots of media on the spot, so everything was recorded for posterity. Once both boys stated for the record that despite their Imagist upbringing, they wanted to have corrective surgery and de-scarring treatment, Elyse disappeared for a moment with her lawyers. She came back to make a hastily prepared statement to the effect that her previous refusal was made in a emotional moment because of her recent bereavement, and she gave her permission that they should have all the care necessary for their complete recovery and restoration.

Her acquiescence made the whole event all foreplay but no orgasm. The media evaporated, and we got little coverage. No precedent was established. Nobody was even arrested! And my mother was _pissed._

On the other hand, the way in which the League had handled things was utterly without flaw. The volunteers had been available and ready, the hospital had assisted fully and generously, and my two nephews could not have been braver or better throughout. It had been one for the textbooks, and the League had not gotten so close for years. So our spirits, all in all, were good.

Especially mine. After all, I was responsible for its planning and execution. And best of all, Primavera was on the same continent and in the same room with me. I was already planning to take advantage of that in every way possible. There was a lot in that alone to make me happy.


	6. Part Six: The Invasion of the Smartasses

**Part Six: The Invasion Of The Smart-Asses**

As the crowd thinned and things got back to normal, I rounded up my core group to take them and Primavera out to dinner. It was now well after nine at night, and nobody had eaten more than a sandwich, what with all the excitement of the standoff.

We got to the restaurant, and it was a great night until two incidents at the end took the glow off it. What made it so good was that everybody hit it off.

For example, once we had placed our orders, Primavera turned to me and said, "Let this be a lesson to you. You wanted my help. You called me and asked me for it, and here I am. I came without being entrapped, charmed, bribed, inveigled, deceived, threatened, or abducted."

"True," I conceded, "but if you'd refused, though…"

"It's clear you know him well." said Lovell, smiling and nodding.

"Yes," she answered him. "Inside and out. In fact--." She turned and told me, mock-confidentially, "I left my initials somewhere on you. I'm not saying where, but don't worry. Not even your wife will ever see them. Unless she murders you in a particularly messy way,"

"She might murder him yet," replied Radcliffe. "They're getting a divorce, and while she wants one, she's furious because he refuses to be heartbroken."

"Oh, poor girl," sighed Primavera. "I'm the only one who could ever have broken his heart." An appalled silence fell over the table. They were silent; I was appalled. When had she realized it? And did she_ have_ to say it out loud?

Her glance darted around the table at our faces, her smile beginning at 'Mona Lisa' and going all the way up the scale to 'Cheshire Cat'. Then she finished, "After all, I installed it." Everybody cracked up and laughed.

It was a convention of the Smart-Asses. It was The Invasion of the Smart-Asses. All through the meal.

I was thinking, _This is how it's supposed to be, _as I relaxed and made wise cracks, and, _With this crew, I could take over the world, _while I was polishing off the strawberries Romanoff, just about the time it got to be less pleasant.

Norfolk finished the story of how he had come to work for me with, "Oh, and when I told my cousin, who's a public defender, she said, 'Richard Genet-York? He's the one they call The Prince of Sharkness'!"

We all laughed, and then I said, "That's a great compliment, and thank you. I'll do my best to deserve it. But I'm not satisfied with just being a prince. I want to be King."

"What kind of King?" asked Catesby. "B.B. or Elvis?"

"What? I know who they were; what do you mean?"

"B.B. King and Elvis Presley are what I think of as the two archetypes of modern kingship. There's no middle ground. If you're an Elvis, you get incredible amounts of money and you're a Star."

"Sounds right to me," I said.

"Wait. Elvis got trapped by it all. He lost creative control and died wondering what went wrong. Plus, people don't take him seriously. B.B. King, on the other hand, lived a lot longer and made a lot more music. He didn't have fame or money on the same scale, but God, can you hear the difference."

"That's a good metaphor, but since I want to be King of A.L.-Bion, how do you make it fit the circumstances?" I asked.

"If he does anything else like what he pulled today, he won't be King of Shit." Bock Ingram had come up behind me. He pulled up a chair from another table and sat on it with the backrest in front like a shield. "You may not be Imagist, and I may not be, but more than half the directors still are." He was visibly angry.

"My nephews will not go to school and get called Blob-face." I told him. "I think it was well worth it."

He looked away at that. "I understand why, and while it may have been the right thing to do, it was not the Imagist thing to do. I tracked you down because I have a question. Who would be your Head of Science?"

"This is not the time or place."

"You're ducking out on it again."

"It's after midnight, it's been a long day, and I'm tired, Bock."

"Do you have someone in mind?"

"At this point, I don't want to give you an answer. You're souring what was, till now, an outstanding day and a really good mood. But to get you out of my face, I'll say this. _You_ are not my first choice. There. Was that your price for your vote, that post?" The waiter brought me the receipt module and I pulled out my key ring of transfer links, stuck one in at random, authorized it, and told him to write his own tip, while I kept Bock's gaze.

"No. Maybe—why not me? Who's your first choice?"

"I-am-not of a mind to answer you. Primavera, which hotel did you say you were staying at?"

"The Djen-shu Abernathy."

My small crowd spilled out into the street, and that was when and where the second thing to spoil the evening happened.

I am predicting this: the next big trend will be those stupid Jump-Bump Riders. Buy stock in them now, but sell it within three months. I don't know why they were there, in the restaurant district, after midnight, but Hastings and Janine Shore were having a tearing good time. They were laughing and shouting as they jumped and bumped along, and one of them—I don't know which—jumped the railing and came down on the stairs as I was climbing up. The repulsor field caught me on my rebuilt shoulder.

It felt like a bullet or an explosion. It knocked me flat. I was sure the bones had shattered and my shoulder was destroyed. I rolled on the stairs, swallowing my dinner again, trying not to pass out or fall on that shoulder. It was dislocated. They got me back in the restaurant, where Primavera popped it back into place and I uttered dire predictions about what I was going to do to Hastings and Janine both. Then my doctor prescribed me a muscle relaxant, which knocked me out, and she went off to her hotel. Everybody else went home.

I think it was Norfolk who got me home; I was gone.

I didn't know Bock Ingram was in the restaurant foyer and heard the threats I made in my delirium and pain. And who would take them seriously, given the circumstances?

The problem was, I had a loud fight with Hastings about it two days later, right after a morning meeting of the directors, and someone murdered him before lunchtime.

Bock Ingram told the police about it, and about what I said that night at the restaurant.

Some days, I think God just plain hates me.

That's getting a little ahead of myself, though. First thing in the morning, the morning after the showdown at the hospital, Primavera's arrival, the dinner, etc, I got a call. Not, alas, from Primavera, offering to come over and not leave for the rest of my life, but from Elyse.

"All right. You got what you wanted. Now, who is this—this shyster doctor you got to come in and front for you? Is she fit to take care of my babies? And what am I supposed to tell people?"

I wasn't in a good mood. My shoulder ached, and together the wine from dinner combined with the muscle relaxant had left me with a slightly hung-over feeling. "First of all, get your archaic slang right. When you're referring to a doctor, the word you use is quack. A shyster is a lawyer. I am the shyster. Doctor Visconti is the quack. Not that she _is_ a quack, but you get my drift."

"Richard! I will bar you from the house, so help me, I will, you conniving little weasel!"

I needed to placate Elyse, or she could forbid Primavera from taking on the boys' case, and then what reason would Primavera have to stay?

"I'm sorry, Elyse. It's just too early in the morning for me. I did right by your boys. I got the same doctor who worked on me. I trusted her enough to have her perform brain surgery on me."

" Oh, and is that why your mind's so twisted?"

"No. There were limits to what even she could do for me. My mind stayed as it was. Primavera Visconti is an X.D. She went to Hopkins-Oxbridge-Sakamura."

Elyse said nothing.

"She was nominated for the Nobel this year," I tried again.

Silence on the other end. I was not impressing Elyse.

"Wait a minute." I had thought of something that Elyse could relate to. "You subscribe to Rag Trade magazine, don't you?"

"Yes."

"In this month's—no, this past month's, find the feature on Schiavoni & Fortuny."

"Just a sec. Okay."

"Look at the digital that's captioned, 'With clients like these, who needs models?' She's the one on the right."

"I can recognize her, Richard, I did see her on the vid last night. I didn't realize she was this tall, though. She's not what you'd call pretty, either…"

I knew the pic in question. Primavera was sharing a fitting room with Dulcie Leah Wilkins, the basketball star, and Llewella Reese, the architect, all of them looking very much at home, extremely tall, and, despite their differences in facial feature and skin tone, like members of one tribe, rather as if they had dropped in from their native planet to do some shopping and see if Earth was worth conquering.

Elyse was reading the accompanying paragraph out loud. "Friends since childhood, these young women are representative of the new jetsetters who work harder than they play. Their combined I.Q.s add up to more than 500 points, their combined net worth is over twenty billion global currency units, and they need wardrobes that reflect it. The design philosophy of Luciano Schiavoni—Richard, how long have you known this woman? How could you keep her a secret like this?" Elyse demanded.

"She's not an Imagist and she's a doctor. I thought it would be tactless of me."

"As tactless as forcing her on me now? I mean, she'll have gotten the wrong idea about us. And she seems like the sort of person I would like to know outside of her work. What's her background? Who are her people?"

"As for that—Do you have more of that Chianti you served after the services?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Patience. If you do, take a look at the label."

I heard distant thumps and clanks as she went over to the wine storage unit and returned.

"All right. I have it."

"Read the label."

"_Visconti Vineyards_… She's one of _those_ Viscontis?"

"Yes. There's a picture of her aunt and uncle's trattorria on the label. And as for the rest of her family—." I keyed in my mother's code and joined the lines. "Mom, I know you're mad about last night, but please pick up anyway. It's for Elyse."

"Yes, Richard? Good morning, Elyse."

"Good morning."

"Mom, do you remember Hugo Visconti?"

"Of course. Horrible man. But he was politically advantageous. We were on that food committee together years ago. What was it called? Pro Vide? Why do you want to know?"

"What was so bad about him?"

"He said your father and I were—It doesn't matter now. As I recall, he's passed away."

"Yes. I went to his funeral."

"You did? What for?" asked Mom.

"Out of friendship for his daughter and respect for his memory. He was a man of great intellect and great integrity."

"Mmm. And a man of great wealth. Is that—that doctor related to him?"

"Yes. His daughter."

"Did she inherit?" interjected Elyse.

"She was his principal legatee, yes."

"What did he leave in the way of real estate?" asked my mother.

"Mom!"

"A lot? A little?"

"I'm not going to answer that."

"Quite a lot, then," my mother concluded.

"So she's the daughter of an old colleague? A family connection, in a way?" asked Elyse.

"I'm not sure I care to know a friend of Richard's. I cannot approve of her profession." Mom stated.

"You make it sound like her calling is prostitution, Mom."

"Mere prostitution is cleaner in the sight of God than what she has chosen to do."

"That's enough, Mom! Elyse, I think you can call her a friend of the family without lying. I don't know if you remember, Mom, but she did visit us with her father once, when she was a little girl."

"Oh. You mean that sweet little child grew up into that great gawky creature?"

"She's not gawky, Mom, just tall. Yes, one and the same."

"We do need to put a better face on things," fretted Elyse. "If she's a friend of the family, at least that's something I can tell people. If only I could meet her somewhere outside the hospital…Will her spouse be joining her?"

"She's not married."

"Not married? Richard, can you arrange our meeting?"

_I never thought your preferences ran toward women, and isn't it awfully soon after Edward's death, Elyse, _I thought, but I didn't say it. Elyse's true preferences ran toward money. Elyse had a great reverence for worldly things, despite her Imagism.

"I find that lunch is a good way to introduce people. You can fill in gaps in the conversation with food. Sure, I'll arrange it."

"Yes…Do you think she would like it if I treated her to a day at the spa?" Elyse wondered aloud.

"I can't say." I told her. "What if I get off these lines and see if she's up for lunch?"

I extricated myself from the conversation and went to splash some cold water on my face. It was not the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Elyse and Primavera. They were never comfortable with each other, being far too different. For example, when they met at lunch, Elyse wanted to talk clothes, while Primavera thought she was there to discuss the boys' treatment.

I didn't get arrested for Hastings' murder; neither did any of my people. We were detained and questioned thoroughly, especially me. Being innocent isn't necessarily the advantage you'd suppose. Fortunately, Lovell had gone to college with one of the detectives. He told his friend that when I talked about litigation, I was a much greater threat, as death would be a kinder fate than facing me in court. There wasn't even circumstantial evidence against me or mine, only those unfortunate coincidences, so the police turned their attention to other aspects and people in Hastings' life.

I wasn't a serious suspect in their eyes, but A.L.-Bion's directorship families were not as inclined to hold us blameless. Especially my mother. I had another nasty run-in with her in the hospital a few days later.

We were sitting in the visitor's lounge, waiting for Elyse and Tom to finish their visit, and she was ignoring me. I didn't mind at all, and I was ignoring her right back, until she began to talk aloud.

"I was happy, once. When I was young, I wanted to be an Imagist minister, because I knew God was good. The world around us was His kingdom, and Heaven itself had no greater glory, if only I could open peoples' eyes to it. I could feel God's presence, just as surely as I could feel the air.

I met a man who was good down to his bones, and he loved me just as I was. He didn't want me to color my hair or paint my skin, enlarge my breasts and slim my legs. Everyone else was making themselves stranger and stranger in the name of beauty, but he thought me beautiful as I was. So I married him.

We had a son and named him Edward. He was perfect. He was proof that genetic modification wasn't necessary. How could people question the wisdom of God by altering His work? Edward was everything we wanted. It was ten years before we had another, but that was all right, we were young, and it gave me a chance to get my master's, to learn and grow.

George was a joy. We had each other, we had our sons. We had enough. But I was greedy. I hoped for a daughter, and we decided to have one more child.

I was sick through your whole gestation. It was horrible. I had felt so good when I carried my first two, but I was miserable when I carried you. I went into labor early; I thought that was a blessing at first, but that labor was a torture."

"But finally I was born, and delighted you and made your life complete." I said what I thought that time. It felt good, but it didn't last.

"You didn't even look human. You looked like a skinned toad. I could not touch you, while you were in the hospital, you had so many tubes and wires going in and out of you. You shrieked when I laid a hand on you. When I tried to hold you, you screamed. You let the nurses pick you up and rock you, but not me."

"You probably weren't doing it right." She ignored me.

"As you grew, I liked you even less. You were too quick; everything came too easily to you. It was as if you were an adult hiding behind a child-face mask. You were artificial. You made a mockery of everything I ever believed in, first by just existing, then by what you said, and now by what you have done and are still doing.

I had a husband—God took him young. I had two splendid sons—now one is dead and I will not see the other again in the years remaining to me. All I have left is you, and you have tainted everything."

My head was pounding, and I was going to explode.

Primavera had come in. When, I don't know, but she must have heard a lot of my mother's speech. She had decided to stay on and oversee the boys' case, until such time as she found out what was happening in Australia.

She said, "It's a great pity you think God is so small and mean. Speaking as a representative from the outside world, it would seem to the rest of us that you have it backward. I met your son Edward at a cocktail party last year. He was a typical CEO; promoted beyond his abilities, full of himself, selfish and offensive. He spent the evening pursuing young women who obviously weren't interested, including me. He didn't give the attention he should have to his job, his wife or his children. Sordid. Hardly splendid.

And George—well. He's in prison. He defrauded, lied and stole from you, your entire family and all your friends. He didn't have splendid qualities either. Did you bring him up to be what he was? If you didn't, who did? Did George think of you, his wife or his children before he started in his criminal career?

I'll grant you Richard is devious and deceitful, but he had the decency to become a lawyer, which is the equivalent to giving a leper a bell to ring and warn people off."

"Thank you." I said. There is a difference between teasing and mockery; it's called affection, and when there's mutual affection anyone can tease me all they like.

"Any time. He has distinguished himself in his chosen career and earned the respect of those who have had dealings with him. You should look at his achievements, and compare them to those of your other sons. And remember that what Edward and George did, they did with family help and influence. Richard was on his own. His accomplishments become even more impressive.

Your other sons have lied and cheated, but you seem to have excused it in them on the grounds that they were beautiful babies."

My mother opened her mouth to speak, but Primavera cut her off.

"I'm rude, I'm presumptuous, and I'm not a family member, so I couldn't possibly understand. Have a nice day." She left.

It was great. She cured my headache without a single pill.

We are still some weeks away from here and now in my story, and I want to get to the important stuff. I'll try and speed this along.

On the day Primavera got the news that the Australian project was officially dead, I took her out to lunch, and finally asked her if she would agree to be my Head of Science, thereby helping me become Executive Director. I explained the plan to her fully and honestly, much as it pained me to do it. I came clean.

"Uh-huh. Having changed the course of my life once already, without asking me first—"

"I asked this time! I did! You heard me!"

"Oh, be quiet. You now propose to do it again. I knew you had me in mind. Ever since that dinner on the night I arrived."

I shook my head. "How did you figure it out? Saying it's easy. Back yourself up with proof."

"You glanced at me when Ingram asked who your first choice was. Involuntarily, I'm sure, but you did."

Had I? Maybe I had. "You're making that up. It's a lot to read into just one glance." I riposted.

"However, I was right. Argue with that. And I read between the lines when it comes to you—between the lines on another page in a completely different chapter, that is." She paused, and went on. "You didn't do me such a bad turn, you know."

"I don't know, but I'm very glad to hear it. When was this?"

"When you brought me yourself to work on. Do you know what brand-new doctors get to do on ecological engineering projects? Even X.D.s with the highest G.P.A's?"

"No."

"Wash bottles, essentially. Once I had my license to practice medicine, and you came along—came to me, specifically to me, put me in charge—it was a great opportunity. It was a career-making opportunity."

"I didn't know."

"I agree. You didn't. I did. The things I discovered about cartilage alone have made my name known around the world. Even though the Prize committee didn't award me the Nobel for it."

"There will be other years. You just didn't get it _this_ time."

"And _that_ is part of why I am still your friend. Anybody else who said that would be joking, not sympathizing. You're serious. You genuinely think I'll be up for a Nobel again."

I was surprised. Nothing seemed more likely to me, but then I believed in _her_.

"This is drifting away from my point, though. The fact is, that although positive things happened as a result of your manipulations and using me, you didn't ask first. I would have said yes."

"I never believed you would." _To more questions I might ask you than just that one, more's the pity._

"I know. It took me a while to figure that out. Now, about this Head of Science job…"

We discussed the position for a while, and what the potential problems would be.

She then asked, "Okay. What I want to know is, how did you ever manage the mudslide?"

"The mudslide was an act of God, spontaneous and free. I didn't even pray for it. Seriously, though. Given everything, especially since I am yet again asking for your help rather than repaying you for your many kindnesses and efforts on my behalf, can you? Will you?"

"I have some misgivings."

"Well, tell me what they are. Maybe I can resolve them."

"It's very early in my career for me to be taking on an essentially administrative position. I would want to be involved in R&D, and get my hands dirty."

"Simple. You can write your own job description and name your own salary. I'll back you."

"You're a trusting soul, aren't you?"

"Trusting in general, no. My trust in you, however, is absolute. Besides, it wouldn't be much of a gift if it came with strings."

"I would not want to make a lifetime commitment to A.L.-Bion. I might not like it; I might want to pursue other things."

"—I accept that. Given the state of A.L.-Bion and the importance of the position, I would need a definite commitment of some length, to be agreed upon later."

"All very well, at least so far. Last of my misgivings, though, is this: While I think you can run A.L.-Bion, and run it well and profitably, I don't think you'll enjoy it. I think you'll be bored and frustrated inside of three years. You're meant to be fighting battles, in court or out of it, by fair means or dirty, attacking or defending as the situation calls for, and as you see fit. You're not cut out to be a placid, day-by-day administrator." "I don't know how to answer—Why do you think that?"

"Because I know you well. Because you've spent this past year at A.L.-Bion bored out of your skull, bored with your job, bored with A.L.-Bion, bored with Daenne, bored with your life. Except when you were after George, and now, when you took up arms in the defense of your nephews. You are never quite so happy as when you're coming down on someone like the wrath of God."

"Well," I admitted, "there's a lot of truth in that. It _is_ fun. But this is my heart's desire. Just as much as being healthy and normal was my heart's desire." _And as much as a life with you is_, I thought.

"Yet being healthy and normal is something you now enjoy every day, after you paid for it with your pain and your work. A.L.-Bion, I fear, will be the other way around, and after a brief period of enjoyment, it will be followed by an enormous amount of work that's a pain in the butt," she responded. "I think you should play to your known strengths."

I laughed. "The pot calls the kettle black. Quite frankly, it seems to me that you're not exempt in this."

"In what?" she asked.

"Obstinately pursuing one career path when another provably suits you better."

"Oh, continue, please. I want to hear this one."

"What have you been doing for the last two years? After spending the better part of a decade working on human beings—."

"Careful! I may unforgive you at any time. Do not forget it!"

"I'm not likely to! But, as I was saying, after experiencing great success working on human beings, and accomplishing revolutionary work on cartilage in particular, you left medicine to take up ecological engineering, where you foundered for far too long doing grunt work under people with half your skills and half your brains, even if you didn't wind up quite as low as washing bottles."

"You're oversimplifying the situation. Pray, go on."

"I will. Immediately after you returned to medicine, at, may I remind you, my request—"

"If you must!"

"The hospital welcomed you with open arms, and you are now _heading_ a plan to separate conjoined twins _in utero_ and induce normal development after separation. Try to tell me _that _isn't more significant than anything you did in those two years."

"Like the taste of that cemetery dirt, do you?" she asked me.

"Excuse me?"

"Do you realize that you're digging your own grave with your mouth?"

"—I am?" I couldn't help but grin. I _liked_ mixing it up in a battle of wits with this woman. Her rejoinders were so unexpected.

"Yes. If, as you say, my métier is human medicine..."

"Which it is."

"Then, why do you want me to leave it again and go to work as Head of Science at A.L.-Bion?"

"Ah. Um… Open mouth, insert foot, after shooting myself in said appendage."

"Indeed. You'd have us both butting our brains out against the wall of A.L.-Bion."

"That can't be proved or disproved, except through time."

"And you want your revenge. Very well. I will help you to it. I want to be right there to say 'I told you so' when the time comes."

"Or eat crow?"

"If you serve it, I'll eat it. You just have to catch and cook it first."

I went forward with my plans and gave my presentation to the director's panel. I knew it was good. No, not merely good. It was excellent. They were listening to me and seeing my vision. It was like lovemaking—when you're doing it right, you can tell from the response, and it spurs you to more.

I didn't make the earth move for everybody, though. My mother's eyes were dry and hot; Richmond and his mother remained distant, and Hastings' wife sat grey and still. Bock Ingram's expression was helping to air-condition the room. Those five were set against me. That left six who were for me, though they were older and Imagist. Five against, and six for, makes eleven directors.

I was the twelfth. The executive directorship was going to be mine.

The next day, we heard Richmond. I'll grant you, his plans were good. Solid, conservative, and practical. Uninspiring. He wasn't as good a speaker as I was, either. There were others. Nobody particularly worthy of note; just also-rans.


	7. Part Seven: The Elevator that Stopped

**Part Seven: The Elevator That Stopped In The Night**

That about brings me to Friday night and the formal party that A.L-Bion threw, in the Vaulted Sky restaurant on the top of the Obelisk building. I was now officially divorced, so I could escort Primavera without causing comment. The evening started off well and ended _very _well, but the in-between part was cruel. It began when I picked her up. She dressed for the occasion.

I stood there at the door, and closed my mouth with an effort. "This makes me very glad I indulged in a new tuxedo. I didn't know I'd be escorting the successor to the glamour of Dietrich and Garbo."

She smiled, a long lazy smile only a notch or two above the Mona Lisa. "You're turned out…presentably. Aren't you going to offer me your arm?"

"Oh. Yes, of course." She was…

Let me describe this. She wore an evening gown made of off-white silk, long and cool as a parfait glass of vanilla bean ice cream, with a short train behind, a bit of ruffling on the shoulder straps, and a V in front, cut _so_ far down (and wide!), that it was obvious only God was holding her up, and He was doing a good job of it. It was _distracting_. I had trouble looking anywhere else, but it was either look away or arrive at the dinner with a visible erection spoiling the line of my trousers. Her perfume was a direct stimulant to every erotic nerve center, too, something with lavender, anise, vanilla and lemon.

She had on a diamond necklace her father gave her when she got her XD magna cum laude. It had a sapphire pendant the size of an egg, which hung in the V-opening of the gown, right in between—Well. She also had on a bracelet with the same stones, and diamond solitaire earrings of no more than two or three carats each.

She had a blue wrap in case she got cold, but that was for out doors. Indoors it came off. Very much off. That dress was cut at least as far down in back as in the front. She got away with it by being a tall, athletic redhead with natural elegance and beautiful, flawless breasts of moderate size. On a more generously built girl with less dignity and self possession, it would have looked vulgar.

Someone, for example, like my ex-wife Daenne, who had come to the party with Bock and was wearing the exact same dress. I suppose that if anything would upset a newly divorced woman, going to a formal party to find that your ex-husband's date is wearing the same dress, only it looks better on her _and_ she's wearing a two-million-global necklace, would do it.

Primavera handled it like this—when she was introduced to Daenne by Elyse, playing the A.L.-Bion hostess for what would probably be the last time, my hopefully-next wife smiled at my ex-wife and said, with humor and grace, "I admire your taste."

Daenne replied, "Um, thank you. I admire yours," and then blurted out a rude and stupid question. "Aren't you worried that something might happen to your jewelry at a party like this?"

Primavera gave me one of her wry glances and quoted Anita Loos, " 'Any girl who was a lady would not even think of having such a good time that she forgot to hang on to her jewelry.' If you will excuse us, I'd like a glass of champagne." She left Daenne and Elyse there, taking my arm again.

We wandered around during the cocktail hour; I introduced her to various people, while the sunset suffused the glass panels and translucent concrete, turning the room raspberry, peach and gold, gradually cooling to lavender and indigo.

Elyse was acting strangely. For some reason, she kept trying to steer Primavera, my mother, and me together. Mom didn't want to be in the same frame of reference as us, nor did we want to be around her, but Elyse was stage-managing it. Why, I did not know. Like I said, strange.

Daenne was working the room. I saw her go from group to group, hearing snippets of what she was saying. She was spreading and garnering gossip about me, about Primavera, and about Primavera _and_ me. Her behavior got to be so bad I had to do something about it.

I caught Daenne's arm and swung us into an alcove.

"Oww," she whined. "Don't grab me like that—don't touch me again, ever, Richard!"

"I apologize. It is my intention never to touch you again. I might almost say it my ambition never to touch you again, but I wanted to say something to you."

"What?" She wailed the word up and down an entire octave.

"You are acting like an embittered woman who has lost something she valued."

"Can't you talk normal to me just once, Richard?"

"You are acting angry and jealous. You are acting as if I left you for Doctor Visconti."

"Didn't you?"

"No." Yes. "Doctor Visconti has been a friend of mine for years." Never mind that I'd been licking her with my eyes all evening.

"Bullshit. Did you give her that necklace?"

"No. I have to say, it's entirely like you to think first of what I might have spent on her. To answer your next two questions, it's real, and it was a present from her father."

"Oh."

"He was very proud of her. Are you going to keep on entertaining everybody with your jealousy and resentment tonight?"

"I'm not--."

"It shows. Daenne—," I sighed. "You didn't love me. That day I stopped in the Cookshop, I read your eyes, and they said, 'This guy's so hooked, I can get away with anything.'".

"I did--."

"It was amazing how shopping sprees and sex followed each other. On the exceptionally rare occasions that we had sex, it was because you'd been spending so much you were scared to admit it without sweetening me up first. Not that I ever made a fuss about it."

"That's not fair!"

"I didn't think so, either."

She was silent a moment. "You married me knowing I didn't love you?"

"And that I didn't love you. I admit that was wrong. It was a spiteful thing to do, and I'm sorry about it." Was I _ever_ sorry about it, at that point.

"You didn't love me? But what you said—."

"About how you were all my happiness? Things like that? That was true. I wasn't making it up. It just wasn't _you_ I meant."

She gasped as though I'd slapped her. How could she have treasured what I'd said and not valued me? Vanity, I suppose.

"None of it?"

"The lust was real enough, at first, anyway. The body just doesn't stay attracted to somebody the brain doesn't like. Look. When we were kids, you called me 'Igor' for three years and you used to stick digitals of monsters in my books with very nasty personalized captions on them. Should I have loved you for that?" I hesitated for a moment, then plunged ahead and asked the question. "Why did you do that, anyway?"

"Why did I do what?"

"Make fun of me like that. Why did you get such a kick out of making my life even more miserable?"

"I don't know. I don't remember."

"Oh, come on, Daenne. You put more time and effort into tormenting me than you put into your studies. You must have had some reason."

"I don't…It made them laugh."

"Yes, it made them laugh. I know that. But why did you keep on doing it?"

"It made them laugh, and," she was racking her brain. "and they liked me, it meant they liked me. I wanted them to keep on liking me."

That sent a shock through me. It was as if I was looking at Daenne for the first time. Instead of the vile little bitch I had always thought her, I instead saw an uncertain, insecure young woman, who was not very bright and knew it, who might just as easily been the butt of all the jokes…

Once again, I had not looked at things from someone else's point of view. I felt a bit ill. I should have asked her that a year and a half ago, before I had married her. Damn, it, I didn't want to feel sorry for Daenne! I didn't want to understand her!

"Why did _you_ marry _me_?" she asked.

"Antacid for all the bile I swallowed on your account. To get back at you." I said, sheepishly.

"You-you heartless, lying user! You're vicious, oversexed—you spider!"

"Heartless means I have no heart for you. 'Lying', I freely admit. 'User'—you used me as calculatingly as I did you, or even more so. 'Oversexed' just means I wanted it more often than you did. 'Vicious' and 'Spider' deserve no comment." Being attacked restored a bit of my _amour propre_.

"You just think you're so smart, don't you?"

"I don't 'think' I am, I simply am. Look on the bright side, Daenne. You've gotten rid of me, you're no longer obligated to sleep with me or speak to me, I made you a nice big settlement, plus you can, in perfect truth, talk about what a son-of-a-bitch your ex-husband is. Count your blessings and be glad."

She spat another nasty name at me, and flounced away.

I am cheered by the thought that I will never have to have another conversation with her. I had, although that was not my goal, achieved a sort of closure with Daenne, and it left me feeling small, shabby, and rather soiled. I had married her for all the wrong reasons, never looked at her as a real person, and shed her as soon as I could. Could Primavera—could _anyone_ love somebody who did things like that?

I turned to the seating chart, and saw that Primavera had been seated quite far away from me. I knew why this was, of course. The Executive Directorship candidates and their supporters were spread throughout the room for a reason; this was a business dinner when all was said and done.

I just wasn't prepared for where they'd put her. Right next to Richmond.

Right then, Elyse rounded Richmond up and brought him over that he might escort Primavera in to dinner, saying, "Knowing Richard, you two won't have met. Doctor Visconti, this is Theodore Richmond-Stanley. He's an MBA, a CPA, and has the Stanley directorship. Ted, this is Primavera Visconti, XD. She's worth over eight billion globals and she's single."

Everyone in earshot of the magic words 'eight billion globals and she's single' got whiplash as they snapped their heads around to look at my tall, lean, glamorous, rich, _available_ doctor. Elyse knew just what would interest people. Especially Theodore Richmond-Stanley.

Richmond went bright pink, and a big, wide, _greasy _grin spread itself over his face until it went from one of his reddened ears to the other. The calculation program in his head was working at a rate three times faster than normal, I could see it. The earrings— the bracelet on the wrist of the hand she extended to him—the dress—the necklace and pendant—and then the program crashed as he noticed the pendant's backdrop, her intimate arcs and barely concealed peaks. Just for a moment, he gaped.

Then he let out a nervous little giggle and brushed his hand over his face, before taking her hand and doing a little bow over it. "Doctor Visconti, I am honored to meet you."

He had probably fallen in love instantaneously.

"Likewise," she returned. "But call me Primavera." She gave him a smile that could have melted glass.

I was taken aback.

She was going to encourage him?

Maybe it was that I had never before seen her with anyone she seemed to be attracted to. She'd had a serious boyfriend, I knew, during the first two years I'd been under her care, but they'd broken up because they weren't spending enough time together to suit him, or so she had said. That had been back before I had realized, or had admitted to myself, the real reason why I had gone to her for my treatment, why I had kept her baby tooth for over twenty years.

The person I work hardest at deluding is myself.

Then I saw who they'd put me next to. Richmond's mother. I gritted my teeth and took her in to dinner.

_He_ was sitting there, bathed in Primavera's sultry radiance, while _I_ was sitting next to his mother. It was intolerable. I made small talk with the people around me, which is the sort of thing I can do in my sleep, while underneath I stretched my ears in their direction.

"It's hard to imagine you could still be single," he oozed. "What qualities are you looking for in a spouse?"

"Well, to begin with, my spouse would have to be male. I like women very much as friends, but I'm strongly heterosexual…"

I was glad to hear _that, _but then I lost the thread of their conversation for a while. When I tuned back in, he was holding forth, at great and boring length, about the agricultural industry, how the only reasonable prices were for soy-yeast culture products, and using the food we were enjoying at dinner as an example of price-gouging on the part of exploitative surface-soil growers as opposed to the much lower, but still too high, prices charged by the hydroponic growers.

She was listening to him with every appearance of interest—she wasn't even interrupting him! She was _always_ interrupting _me—_but she heard _him_ out, before answering, "If you spent a year working for a surface-soil farming concern, you wouldn't say that. I did, when I was thirteen, between college and medical school. I needed a year off, and it was only right that I should learn something about the land I've since inherited…"

"Inherited?" he asked, his features showing that his opinion was shifting from a stance against surface-soil farmers and their evilly high prices to one in which he envisioned collecting the respectable profits to be had from scratching in the dirt, as he had put it.

"Yes. I was my father's principal heir. He and his brother bought adjoining estates in Tuscany, my father providing most of the capital and my Uncle Marco the know-how…" I lost the conversation again for a moment. "My cousin Lia—that's short for Virgilia— got one doctorate in viticulture and another in oenology, and now our wines win medals. Of course, the olives have always been excellent; the first pressing of oil is like liquid summer. The real profit, though, is in heirloom fruits and vegetables, so we have twenty hectares planted with tomatoes…"

His eyes were so bugged out, they would be rolling on the table in a moment.

_Please, Primavera, don't tell him about…_

"The villa on the estate is fundamentally sound, but very badly in need of updating." _No! No! She was telling him! _

"How so?" he asked.

It still has _wiring_," she emphasized.

"Wiring? Well, that shouldn't be too hard to fix," he reflected. "Especially if you didn't rip it out. Are the roof and foundations in good condition?"

"They are. But the plumbing's inadequate, and there's hardly a stick of furniture in the place. My cousins tell me that if I cared to correct those problems, I could name my own rental rates. It's a truly lovely place, so well proportioned that it's hard to know how to furnish it without cluttering it up unnecessarily."

"But think of the money you'd save on furniture! And if it has potential earning power as a rental, you're throwing money away every day it's empty. You'd recoup your investment in a few seasons. Is it a large house?"

" There are twelve bedrooms on the second floor. Parts of the house go back to the thirteenth century."

He nearly messed himself with excitement. He would.

"That's not a house, that's a hotel!"

"Oh, I could never do that. I could never turn it into a hotel. I've put some thought into it, though. Once I marry, when we're ready to start our family, I want to live in the villa and bring my children up there, as my father brought me up. _He _brought me up. He had help—but he was…" She broke off, and looked away, embarrassed by the strength of her feelings, then changed the subject slightly. "Some of the out-buildings could be converted into a private hospital for my patients."

That sounded like an excellent idea to me.

Too bad it wasn't me she was telling about it.

I took another look at him. Richmond was tall, whereas I am not. He was as tall as, or taller than, she, and I supposed women found him attractive…..

I thought about what I would do if she returned his regard. There was another reason to keep love and business apart. If she cared for him, would she not support him and work for his betterment? What if she married him? Would she not drop me as even a friend, because he didn't like me? What would be left for me in this world? I would have to have him killed. I might even do it myself.

It was in this frame of mind that I entered the elevator with her at the end of the party. Richmond had said goodnight to her in a truly disgraceful display of naked greed.

Given that the Obelisk building was so tall that it reached into the stratosphere, an elevator ride from top to bottom could take twenty to thirty minutes. The elevators were big and had a bench around the walls. We had this one to ourselves. She sat down. I stood at the center of the elevator. I was in a ferocious dark mood. In my mind I saw my future dissolving like a cube of sugar in the entirety of the ocean. My one morsel of sweetness, gone, lost in all the bitter salt…

"There's something I have to say." I forced out. "If you're going to choose someone else, can't it be somebody who I could like and respect, and not Richmond?" Then I wanted to bite through my tongue. Else! Else? Why did that betraying word have to come out?

She said, "If I'm going to choose somebody else—fascinating choice of words—can it not be Richmond? Leaving aside that 'else', I'm not interested in Theodore Richmond-Stanley."

"You seemed to be. To me."

"At dinner? Playing with him passed the time. He was so blatantly interested in how wealthy I am that I thought I'd draw him out and see how brazen he would get. It was quite entertaining. His eyes got big and shiny. I was only cat-and-mousing him."

I was having trouble thinking, which was new for me. "You looked so animated. Do you—have you been cat-and-mousing me?"

"You? No." She gave me a long, unreadable look. "I've been waiting for you to get over your conviction that no one who really knew you could ever love you."

God. Hearing that hurt. It was as painful as the physical therapy when my left hand had to be trained into being a hand and not a useless claw.

I had spent all my life like a beacon sending out signals into a vast infinite night, waiting for something to send a message back to me. Now I heard it. I could not speak.

She could, though. "I don't know why I should keep hanging around, for apart from being brilliant, _wickedly_ funny, imaginative, determined, resolute, a crusader where anything helpless is concerned, courageous, _really _good at what you do, as energetic as a generator for an entire city, and secretly a good person, while at the same time being the most fascinatingly evil and reprehensible creature on the face of the earth, there's nothing about you that interests me at all—. You look like you're going to throw up."

I had to stop something. Time, maybe, or what she was saying, or one or the other of us from living any longer. Before she said, "Just kidding." I settled for stopping the elevator, and hit the emergency button. The elevator shuddered slightly as it came to a halt, and somewhere an alarm sounded.

My mouth had gone so dry that I had to lick my teeth to get my lips to move. "Don't be joking." I said. "Not about this."

"You could tell if I were."

The elevator intercom broke the tension. "Car three, your alarm is going off. Is anything wrong?"

Primavera got up and unstuck the stop button. "We're fine," she told them. "My friend looked ill for a moment, that's all." Coming over to the panel meant coming over to me. She is fifteen centimeters taller than I am. She had to bend and I had to stretch that we might bring our mouths together.

Most of her extra height is leg, so sitting down on the bench made making out a lot easier, and it seemed only seconds before we got down to the lobby.

I went back to her hotel with her, and stayed there.

What is it like for the Dickensian waif outside in the cold, when the door he thought forever barred against him suddenly opens, and he learns they've been waiting dinner for him? Some things should not, cannot, be described. Besides, I don't want to brag.


	8. Part Eight:  Who Knew?

**A/N: **Thank you, my readers! This is the last chapter, as the book is now.

* * *

**Part Eight: Who Knew?**

That was this past Friday night. Rather late on Saturday morning, I woke up, and I was happy. Nothing hurt, everything worked, and I remembered where I was and who I was with. Miraculous. I was Christmas-morning happy, between the present I had unwrapped the night before, when that ivory gown had slipped off her, and the gift I was looking forward to asking for that morning, which might last the rest of my life…

It would have been ironic if there had been no sexual chemistry between us once we finally got naked, but that was not going to be a problem. It seemed as if we were unusually compatible, and that night had been a very intense experience, physically and emotionally. She was the important one, and had always been.

She drew in that first deep breath of waking. Brulee the cat was perched on her shoulder, and when I pulled her close, he swayed and squawked about it. She smiled and said my name before she opened her eyes.

"I'm telling you this now before I ask you to marry me, just so everything's clear," I said. "I will never lie to you or cheat on you, but I'm not going to reform. You can expect chicanery, deceit and prevarication out of me on a daily basis. I'm nasty, spiteful, splenetic, I love to gloat, and I'm going to stay that way. That only applies to the world outside, however. With you I'll be as agreeable as two weeks in Cancun. Was that a chortle? Besides, you even see through the lies I tell myself, so lying to you is a waste of effort. I want to keep you in the know so you can appreciate how clever I am."

"Oh, lord," she groaned, and added, "I'm not good at witty repartee before I've showered and had a mug of tea. You're just saying all these things to lull me into a false sense of security."

"No!", I protested, "I love—."

"You're trying to get my hopes up by promising me a life with lots of exciting things to relate over dinner, and infuriated people dropping by to rage and curse your name for what you've done. I can see through it, though. You'll grow into another boring middle-aged lump of a husband—." She was grinning. I grabbed her bare waist and tickled. The cat launched himself off the bed, complaining about the unfairness of it all. We did not get up for another hour…

Early Saturday afternoon, Lovell, having tracked me down, called Primavera's suite to tell me that Hastings's wife had been arrested the night before for murdering him and attempting to murder Janine Shore.

He also said, "We had a betting pool going on how you were going to make your move, so what happened?"

"A what? Laying bets on me—Primavera and me?"

"Uh-huh."

"How did you all know—?"

"Are you kidding? The temperature of any room the two of you were in went up ten degrees. None of us wanted to stand between you two for fear of spontaneous combustion. And furthermore—."

"Okay, okay. This is outrageous and insulting. But I'll answer. She gave up waiting for me and took the initiative."

"Radcliffe's the winner, then. She put her money on Doctor Visconti."

I passed that on to Primavera. She said, "I was _trying_ to make it as easy for you as I could. Why do you think I turned up in that dress, if not to fetch you?" Saturday afternoon, we went out.

I had no idea being a couple, a real couple, was so much fun. The most ordinary things become fun. Going to a bookstore and then out to dinner is enough to stop the heart with happiness.

I steered us to one of the better jewelry stores. It looked like rain, the kind of thundershower we often got on August afternoons, one which would last ten minutes, drench everything, and dissipate leaving the air even stickier than before, having done nothing to cool the day or alleviate the drought. We didn't have umbrellas, so as it grew darker, I took stock of where we were, and suggested that we cross the street and turn the corner. When the first few fat drops smacked the pavement, I said, "Let's duck in here."

'Here' was Roundel's, one of the best jewelers working today. "While we're here, why don't we look around a little?" I said to Primavera, and to the diamond seller, "Might we see some engagement rings?" Primavera gave me an eloquent, amused look.

"Certainly, sir. Miss." beamed the man. "If you'd care to sit over here?" The seating we were directed to were stylish, comfortable chairs. Roundel's knew how to assess people and their spending capabilities.

"I don't want to see anything smaller than seven carats, solitaire or center stone." I pronounced. As our clerk reached for a tray, Primavera protested, "Seven carats is much too large a stone."

"Why is that too large? Your solitaire earrings are what? Six carats total?"

"Not quite. Five point eight nine."

"Shouldn't your engagement ring be more significant than your earrings?"

"Not when you consider my work." The salesman stood there silently as we debated, holding a tray of scintillation. His eyes tracked the course of our give-and-take like a tennis spectator.

"How does that come into it?"

"I have never yet had to stick my ears inside a patient of any species for any reason whatsoever, but my hands have been wrist deep inside any body cavity you care to name. Not to mention all the other things I get into. The larger the stone, the more likely it is something will happen to it."

"But the ring Daenne chose was four and a half carats. If I were to go by what you mean to me, proportionately, you wouldn't be able to lift your hand for the weight of your diamond. Am I supposed to give you a lesser ring than I gave her?"

That didn't make her smile. "Of everything that went on between you and Daenne, the things that have to do with jewelry bother me the least. This isn't a competition, Richard."

Ow. I deserved that. I was momentarily lost, but I rallied. "I don't want this to be a competition. I want you to have a ring you like and can be happy about wearing, and one that lives up to your other pieces. I would like your engagement ring to be able to sit beside your father's gifts and not look shoddy."

Our hovering attendant coughed. "If you will excuse me for a moment, I would like to visit our vault." We excused him.

While he was gone, she said, softly, "When you said you were marrying Daenne, that was one of the worst shocks of my life. I had only just overcome all the anger and betrayed feelings at finding out you engineered my exclusion from those two projects, and then you told me you were marrying someone. Someone else. I considered catching the next shuttle. You would have found me on your doorstep saying, 'You're not marrying her, you're supposed to be marrying me!'"

"I wish you had! That would have been wonderful. Why didn't you?"

"You don't have a monopoly on pain, doubt, and anger."

"I cannot now apologize properly, as that man's coming back." He had returned with a stack of hand-sized black velvet boxes.

"Sir. Miss. If you would care to see them, I have here several fine examples of diamonds that are out of the ordinary. They haven't been set, but we have empty settings in stock, or we can switch center stones if you see one you like that's already made up. None of these are larger than four carats. Most are under three." He sat down, opened one of the boxes, handed it to me, and then gave the next to Primavera.

Pale orange fire bathed my eyes. "These are natural fancy-colored diamonds. They are entirely natural. None of these has been created or enhanced in a laboratory, and each has a certificate of authenticity. You will note the International Gemological Institute's seal on the card in the lid. It also describes each stone in great detail." He continued his speech as she and I traded boxes. The other stone was a light yellow-green, not unlike olive oil. He opened the next two boxes, which held a bright yellow and a candy-pink.

"Do you like the yellow?" I asked her.

"Oddly enough, no, even though yellow's usually my favorite. This one's too sulpherous. The pink's too sweet. I have nothing against either the orange or that greenish one, but neither one inspires me."

We took the last two boxes. "Ah—!" said Primavera. I looked over. Seawater married to light had made a stone with the qualities of both parents.

"A deep blue-green diamond," said the merchant. "One of the rarest colors that exists. This stone is particularly fine."

I took the certificate from the lid. Three point twelve carats, cut in the classic round style, exceptionally slight inclusions, clean and flawless to the unaided eye. He wasn't lying. I turned the card over, glanced at him. He shifted his hand so I could see the number on his Powermod—the price. It was high enough to satisfy my pride and then some, yet not so high that I would dissuade her from choosing it. I raised an eyebrow at him, on general principles. He grimaced, pushed a key, and the price dropped by a few thousand. I frowned with one side of my mouth; several thousand more globals were deducted.

"What gives it that color?" I inquired. "Boron?"

"It isn't caused by any mineral, but by millions of years of irradiation from naturally occurring radioactive materials in the earth's crust that causes a defect in the molecular structure. The stone itself isn't 'hot', radioactively."

"So it's the defect that makes it unique and rare?" asked Primavera.

"Yes, miss. It's not a defect that affects its strength in any way. It will be no more prone to damage than any other diamond."

"Without the defect, it would be much the same as any other gem-quality diamond of its size and clarity? Rather boring and indifferent?"

"Well—It would certainly be less desirable."

"I can think of a person whose so-called defects have made him something rare," she leaned over and spoke softly in my ear, "and very desirable, although he has the hardest time believing it."

I couldn't be blushing. I _never_ blush. But my face felt unaccountably hot all of a sudden. I pulled out my key ring of transfer links. "Um. Perhaps if we could see some examples of ring settings? I believe a choice has been made."

We browsed while the jeweler worked.

"Do I get to give you something?" she asked, looking at a selection of shirt studs.

"You already did." I smiled and slid my arm around her waist. "And I'm putting a ring on it."

"Mmhmm. To mark your property?"

"You betcha."

"Speaking of property, how do we handle the pre-nups, seeing as you are my lawyer? I'm not sure whether to call it a conflict of interest or an example of excessive interest."

"You don't need to go to anybody else. There will be nothing simpler. First of all, we won't be breaking up. Ever."

"Never? Not for any reason?"

"Not under any circumstances. I will conduct myself in such a way that you should never have a reason to be dissatisfied. I don't believe there is anything _you_ could possibly do that could make me want to divorce you."

"Nothing? Not infidelity? Not that I'm planning any, I just want to hear the reasoning behind this vision of yours. This is all conjecture."

"Understood. If I couldn't fulfill your emotional and sexual needs, obviously I would be doing something wrong. I would just have to try harder."

"Bankruptcy?"

"If you were to go broke for any reason, I would be delighted to support the family."

"If I were pregnant with another's child?"

"You're the geneticist. I would assume you had good reason."

"If you were to come home to discover me in the midst of a multisexual orgy?"

"Would I be allowed to join in?"

She laughed. "Enough! Back on topic. The pre-nups."

"As you wish. Since you are more than ten times wealthier than I am at present, it would be foolish not to have something in writing. It will be simple. You can have everything I have or ever will have, myself included, and I will waive all rights to any of your fortune and property, during your lifetime and after."

"You," she said with great deliberation, "are deranged. Clearly, you're a danger to yourself, if not to others. I'll talk to Regina Radcliffe about this. She seems like the sensible sort."

"She is, but it won't make any difference."

The salesman returned with the diamond in its setting, which had three smaller rich yellow diamonds, not sulpherous in the least, on each side of the central stone. I slipped it on her ring finger, hooked a handy stepstool with my foot, stepped up, and kissed her properly. We went back out into the bright day.

It seemed like a good moment for it, so I tried, "Primrose?"

"Primrose? I beg your pardon?"

"Well, I have to call you something, don't I? Somehow, you don't seem like a 'honey' or a 'darling.'"

"Honey' and 'darling' are very useful if you're having a memory lapse and can't recall a name. However, 'Primrose' doesn't do it for me. Don't let me discourage you in your search, though. I've waited years to be endeared properly."

"Sunflower?"

"That has possibilities."

"That wasn't what I was going to ask you, though. It was this: Do you believe in God?"

"You know how to ask the tough ones. Don't you know how rude it is to ask that? Almost anybody would tell all the details of their sex lives or their personal finances rather than talk about their beliefs."

"Well, I already know the details of your sex life and finances, so I have to fall back on God to provide conversation material." I paused, uncertain. "I believe in Him."

"Yes, I know. You forget how often I've heard you blame Him for the crappiness of your life."

"Oh, yeah. You said I have a way with blasphemy. I'm not as mad at Him as I used to be. He's been making up for a lot recently, with how magnificently things have been working out. But I have a different concept of Him than most people. I see Him as kind of a crafty guy who's playing the biggest, most elaborate chess game in existence against Himself. It has to be against Himself, because nobody else is up to His level, and He has to pretend He doesn't know how it's going to turn out."

"So you're saying you still have an Imagist view of God?" she asked me.

"Hey, that's the _last_ way I'd ever see God!"

"Calm down, Richard! It's okay. I didn't accuse you of _being_ an Imagist, but when you described Him, you essentially described yourself. That is very Imagist."

"Hmm. I never thought of it like that. What about you, Sunshine?"

"Sunshine? Me? I think not… I believed in my father. As far as I was concerned, he was God. Maybe not _the_ God, but certainly _a_ god. As for _the_ God, sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't. There is something I am sure of, though."

"And that is?"

"As a doctor, a scientist and geneticist, someone who has studied the world and life at its most basic, I am sure that if this Earth was made and did not just happen, than Whoever created it does not need our worship, any more than we need the worship of mice that are grateful to us for filling barns with grain. This planet is a wonder, a marvel, and Whoever made it is far too great to say, 'Bow down before me'. That's too small, too petty, too _human_."

I was silent for a long moment as I considered what she said. I thought of the nature center, of the perfect rightness of birds cleaving the sky, of the concentric petals of water lilies. There was something in her idea.

"If you're correct in your theory, then where do all these religions come from?" I asked.

"We have to have some way of telling people how to be human beings. It's the third most important thing we learn, right after language."

"What's the first?"

"Toilet training, quite frankly. Hygiene first, then communication, then morality. It's all part of socialization."

Which ended that discussion, at least for the time being. She had given me a lot to think about.

One very nice thing was getting to touch her, knowing she wanted me to, and having her return the contact, or surprise me by reaching out to me first—not that we were groping each other publicly. Nor do I mean only in a directly sexual way. After all, even if you're pumped full of performance enhancers and do-it-again drugs, there's only so long you can spend actually having sex. But touching is another story, and the socially acceptable ways are lovely in and of themselves; an arm around her waist, leaning into her while we looked at the same book.

That was how Norfolk found us in the bookstore—she was showing me a passage in a play called The Lady's Not For Burning, by a 20th century playwright called Christopher Fry.

He came around the end of the stack, and surprised us there. "Excuse me—Richard!" he said. "Doctor Visconti. Um, hello," He grinned involuntarily, and tried to hide it.

"Don't even pretend you're shocked to find us like this. Lovell told all." Primavera teased him.

"Besides, we've made it official." I nudged her arm. "You'll be the first we've told." She displayed her ring.

"Wonderful! That's an unusual stone..." he said. "Congratulations. We've been expecting this ever since we heard that you and Daenne were divorcing."

"What, before you ever met Primavera?"

"Oh, yes. Not that you talked about her, but once when you took a call from her, I happened to catch you smiling. Really smiling, not just baring your teeth."

"I go around thinking I'm a stone wall, and it turns out I'm plate glass," I complained.

"Only to people who you let in behind the circle of defenses," said Norfolk. "Hey, have you thought about the bride's gift to the groom?" he turned to Primavera.

"No, but we haven't been engaged for twelve hours as yet."

"I have a suggestion. Do you have any oceanfront property?"

"No."

"Then you should buy some. What do you think of giving him the Island of Monte Cristo?"

I said, "Just because _you're_ obsessed with Alexandre Dumas doesn't mean…," as Primavera said, "What a _great_ idea! I wonder who owns it now? How appropriate. Thank you, Norfolk."

"Okay, explain. I know you're referring to The Count of Monte Cristo, but I've never read that one. I know that makes me an illiterate, but in my defense, I have read all the Musketeers books and Dumas' book about food."

"Never read it? It's only the best revenge novel ever written," protested Primavera.

"He's been too busy_ living_ it to read it," laughed Norfolk. "If you do get the island for him, tell me, and I'll hunt down a prize copy of the book to go with it."

"Please do," smiled Primavera. "And now… I want some dinner."

"Then I'll say goodbye," concluded Norfolk. "Newly engaged people don't need a third at dinner. I am very happy for you both."

Perhaps some day I will cease to be surprised that people like me, but I will never get tired of it.

Sunday morning, Primavera moved from the hotel into an apartment next to mine, Abyssinian cat and all, and we then took out an adjoining wall. Modular units are great that way. It was a temporary arrangement, just until things settled down after the transitions at A.L.-Bion, and we had leisure to look for a real place.

We spent the afternoon at Elyse's, hanging out with all the kids. They had met her already as Eddie and Rick's doctor, but as she was now going to be their aunt, the situation had changed. We played outside, kids and adults altogether, until Elyse came home. She quickly caught on to the changed relationship between us, and smiled nastily. Then she told us to go take our happiness somewhere else—but could she see me early next morning? The vote was to be in the afternoon. I said yes, and my love and I went off together, to walk and idly make plans for the future and our wedding. We'd be married in Tuscany, with her aunt and uncle and cousins around her…

Yesterday was Monday. I met Elyse at nine, in Ed's old office. She opened our meeting by tossing a file folder down in front of me. Its cover read, in blue on silver, _Bosworth Analytical Services._

"This is a compilation made for the Bureau of Estates," she said. "As required by law. About ten years ago, a young lawyer by the name of Richard Genet-York got a law passed which ensures that all heirs and children, whether adoptive or genetic, born in or out of wedlock, with the exception of properly attributed sperm and ova donor children, get a share in their parents' estate. It's popularly known as the Bastard's Rights Act. In order to have the estate settled and the will probated, I had to go to Bosworth and get them to run a check of all registered DNA patterns, which is pretty much everybody these days, against Edward's, to check for any children he had out of wedlock. Of course I knew about Steven down in Uganda. I thought he was the only one. It was unpleasant for me to learn about the six others."

"He had _six other children!_" I fake it so real, I am beyond fake, but that _was_ a surprise to me. I had thought there were only five. I'd been watching his money, though, not his sperm. "Oh, I am so sorry."

"Thank you, Richard. I don't think you know how sorry you are, or rather, how sorry you're going to be. Look at the top profile."

She had something, or thought she did. I opened the Bosworth file. The first page had a printed digital clipped to it; a shot from the party on Friday. I pulled it loose and put it aside.

The name on that profile was a name I knew. _Primavera Visconti._

My doctor, my best friend, my love and lover, my soon-to-be wife, all the things she was to me—

Was my brother's daughter.

Elyse meant to shock, horrify, and disgust me. I glanced at her. She was giving me a look I knew well, as I'd seen it on my mother's face often enough. Bitter triumph.

Primavera was Edward's genetic daughter. I thought about her life history.

She was Hugo Visconti's adopted daughter; I'd known that all along. She was one of the thousands, if not millions, of Mississippi Delta Plague orphans from the outbreak nearly thirty years ago. It was a cruel disease that killed healthy adults and left children untouched. In trying to save the littlest ones from a slower death from dehydration, medical professionals and volunteers alike had swept up pre-coherent minors, babies and toddlers, by the dozens, _every day_ when the plague was at its peak. Paperwork and identification got lost or was left behind, and the DNA Registration Act didn't exist yet.

Orphanages were put together in haste, far too much haste, to house and care for them all. There was a shockwave two years later, after the disease had finally run its course and the government was trying to impose order in the central states. Some of the orphanages were as good for the children as you could want them to be, clean, loving, well-run—but others weren't.

Primavera had been placed in what was arguably the worst of them. Neglect. Physical abuse. Emotional abuse. Sexual abuse. They found the bodies of children, some dead for over a year, wrapped in plastic and shoved into the garbage bins to dry out. They didn't rot. There has to be flesh on a body for it to rot, and those children had died of starvation… while there were cases of food, unopened, locked in the orphanage's storerooms.

Hugo Visconti had led in the team who discovered those horrors, and as they were trying to round up all the living and evacuate them, he heard a noise in one of the broom closets. Behind a sink, in a space smaller than a child should have fit into, dank and wet, was a tiny child with matted, reddish hair who wouldn't come out. She was crying for her father, though she didn't know who he was or what her own name was.

He told her that he was her father, and she came to him. He then made his lie the truth, and adopted her. He gave her the name Primavera. She could have been any age from three to five, so they called her four, and made the day he found her, her birthday.

Two years later, when she was somewhere around six or seven, and I was thirteen, we met, and that began the chain of events, the association, the relationship, what ever you want to call it, that led me there to that moment, thinking how much better a father than Ed Hugo Visconti had been.

It had been part of the bond between us, the separate seasons we had spent in hell, giving us a deeper understanding of each other.

It would have been quite possible. Edward had fathered Steven at about the same time, and Steven was even a little older than Primavera. Did Ed have a red-haired, brown-eyed girlfriend? I couldn't remember. He must have. Neither trait ran in the Genet-York family. Had she put her child up for adoption, or kept her? Had he known he had another child? It could never be known, now.

I had a niece only about six years younger than I was.

There was the real reason she and I were so like one another. DNA.

How did I feel about it? It didn't bother me.

What bothered me was how Primavera might feel about it.

This was the sort of thing you tell a lover in person, and as soon as possible. I smiled brightly at Elyse, snapped the folder shut, handed it back to her, and said, "Very interesting. I'll certainly take this under advisement. If I don't call before then, I'll see you this afternoon, won't I? You're coming to witness the vote?"

"Oh, yes," she spit at me. "I've told your mother, by the way. The picture from the party was what convinced her."

I looked at it. Yes, that would do it. Elyse had taken it when she was hounding the three of us together. My mother and Primavera were looking in the same direction, and the resemblance was strong. "Again, thank you, Elyse. I'll have to return the favor sometime."

As soon as I left the room, I called home. Who knew what Elyse or my mother might do? She answered, and I asked her to shut down all communication with any one but me. I finished by telling her, "Take an old book and shut yourself in the walk-in closet, after you put earplugs in."

"Oookay. Should I do this reading under a quilt with a flashlight?"

"It couldn't hurt."

"Richard, are _you_ hurt? Are youdying?Did you kill somebody?"

"No. Not yet." We said our goodbyes, and broke the connection.

When I got home and found her pacing around, I stifled her "Oh, Ri—," with my mouth, and kissed her as if, as it might be, for the last time. She might not feel the same way, afterward. When we parted, she was as sad and serious as I had seen her since her father's death.

I did not stall for time. "Elyse ran the legally required paternity screening for Edward's genetic children. He had several children out of wedlock; I knew about it, but there was a surprise. You are on the list."

"Me? Is it a lie? A feint? No, it would be too easy to disprove. Richard—you're my uncle?"

"It would seem so."

"I want to sit down."

We sat, not touching. I looked at her face as her thoughts played across it. I had thought her features almost ordinary, when first I saw her adult face at the hospital seven years before. What they truly were was _familiar. _Literally familiar, as in, like family.

There were her grandmother's, my mother's, sculpted cheekbones. Edward's height. Her grandfather's, my father's, full lips and wide mouth. Her forehead was different—no, I saw one like it every day. In my mirror. Her eyes had the same exotic shape that made George look a bit wild and pagan.

In her were all the people I had ever loved, and she was the only one of them who had ever loved me.

But as much of her was her unknown mother. Her long nose with the little bump at the bridge, and the rich chocolate of her eyes, had come from her mother. And the rather square chin, and the red tones in her hair. And perhaps her heart.

She shook her head and protested, "I don't want to be Ed's genetic child. He was a boring womanizer! He made a pass at me. Several passes. I don't want to be Elyse's step-daughter, either. Or Madame Genet-York's granddaughter. Or—my god—_your _niece."

"We don't seem to have a choice."

"Hugo Visconti was my father. _That_ is the truth. That's the important truth. That my DNA came from Edward—is only a fact." She looked at me. "Nevertheless, it is a great shock."

"Yes, but what now?"

"I—must think."

She lapsed into silence briefly, and then said, "I have it. You blind yourself and I hang myself."

I had to wrench my thoughts into line with hers. "Oedipus. No, that's mother-son incest."

"Send to the king of the Hittites for a son of his to marry?"

"That's grandfather-granddaughter, and she'd already been married to her kid brother King Tut, for years."

"True—then you make up a riddle about it to confuse people, until the one who figures it out runs off, and we're both struck by lightning by the angry gods."

"Where'd you get that?"

"Shakespeare. Pericles, Prince of Tyre. The king of Antioch and his daughter."

"Father-daughter. Edward wanted to; you didn't. Nothing happened, so it can't be that."

"Then I marry Han Solo?"

"Brother-sister."

"No classical examples spring to your mind, then?"

"None whatever."

"Mutual suicide pact?"

"We would die of old age before we agreed on the method." Nothing had yet stopped us from being smart-asses.

"Nothing to do but live, then."

"But how? That's the question. Together or apart?" I asked her.

"I'll say this right now; genetically and morally I have no qualms whatsoever. Genetically, it won't matter, as our children, should we have any, would be conceived in a dish and optimized before implantation. There would be no chance of any genetic disasters hauling themselves out of the Genet-York gene pool to flop around on dry land. Do you even want children? One of the many things we hadn't gotten around to talking about." She tilted her head, questioning me with her eyes as well as her words.

"I had pictured us with children, one day. Bright enough to make the world stare and wonder." Smelling of baby shampoo and peanut butter…

"Tremble in fear is more like it."

"That could be good, too. Morally, you were saying?"

"Morally, I feel we're in the clear. We met as consenting adults. It's not as if I were underage and you were sneaking down the hall to molest me. You would know more about the legal aspects than I would."

"This sort of thing has been going on since the late twentieth century, since the advent of modern reproductive methods. Laws and people being what they are, it took us until forty-four years ago to examine and redefine the marriage laws and the meaning of incest."

"So what is it now? I ought to know this stuff; why did I never learn?"

"I'm shocked to find you don't know everything in the world. Incest is now the technical term for a relationship within the first degree—parent-child, brother-sister, grandparent-grandchild—or genetic congruence of greater than twenty-five percent, if they come together under circumstances such as ours. Marriages between individuals so related are still forbidden."

"And for us?"

"We're within the second degree, now called a 'consanguineous relationship' to distinguish it from incest. This covers first cousins, half-siblings, and situations like ours, uncle-niece and aunt-nephew. Or uncle-nephew, etcetera. The genetic overlap has to be twenty-five percent or less, but we are free to marry almost everywhere."

"Hm. Pass me my Powermod?"

A moment later, we knew that we shared 23.74123533333 of the same genes. Entirely within the legally permissible percentage to marry.

"I could never connect the you I know with the concept of 'my father's brother' anyway. My uncle is Marco Visconti. He lives in Tuscany and he owns a traditional method organic farming concern. Every feeling in me would balk at the idea of going to bed with him, in or out of wedlock. There's just something wrong with sleeping with someone with whom I fought over my bedtime twenty-three years ago."

"I agree with you. It's socialization. I was getting weirded out by Edward and Elyse's daughter Elyse Jr.—Ellie, that is—a few weeks ago, when she seemed to be becoming a little too interested in me. I've sent her dolls and things since before she was born."

"There is another thing to consider, however. The executive directorship. This is a weapon that would defeat your appointment; that is, if we stay together, if we marry. Elyse knows it. She will reveal this information to the other directors this afternoon, if she hasn't already."

It was true. The directors whose vote I counted on were older, conservative, and traditional Imagists. No matter what laws or percentages I cited, they would look at this with horror and disgust.

"It could still happen," she said, softly. "If we broke up immediately. If you went before them this afternoon, confessed, explained, repented. If we expressed our shock and dismay and put on enough sackcloth and ashes. And then never saw each other again. Literally: never speak or write or meet. I could still boss the Science department. You could still be Executive Director."

"No."

"Yes. It would hurt. It would hurt like the amputation of a limb, and we might bleed, but we would live and heal."

"We have only had three days." It was horrible to think of. It was like when my father died. Was that all I would ever have of love, just a taste?

"Would it be easier if we'd had three weeks? Or three years? Or three children? Besides, looked at another way, we were together nearly every day for over four years."

"When I was in the hospital. It wasn't this."

"No. But it was friendship and we were together."

"We couldn't even have that any more. They would be watching and spying."

"You would be Executive Director. You would have your heart's desire."

I paced up and down the room. The executive directorship was mine for the taking. Every move I had made for over twenty years had been made with the intent of getting that position. Ever since I knew Edward was being groomed for it. I wanted it.

I looked at her. She was still on the sofa, looking out the window. Her hair was growing out of the cut she had when she came here. It was shoulder length now, and a little unruly, tousled. Sexy.

With every breath I took, my feelings changed. I could never give her up. No. Love was too ephemeral, too intangible. It could dissolve at any moment. But I wanted her.

She got up and went for her purse. At the door, she paused. "I'm going for a walk. I'll be back in twenty minutes, half an hour, something like that." She took off the ring we chose two days before, made it spin across the foyer table as if it were a toy top, and closed the door behind her as she left.

Leaving me to struggle with myself.

What if I chose her over the directorship, and we broke up, seven years or five years or five months or one month later?

What if I chose the directorship and loneliness crushed all the satisfaction in it?

I paced some more. All the possibilities, good and bad, crashed around in my head. I would have given a lot not to have to make that decision at all.

Then I thought about Edward and his ready acceptance of death whether it was from heart disease or in a building's collapse, and George, who had carefully engineered his life to put him in a place where he didn't have to be competent, or responsible for anything or anyone. I remembered the dead bird, trapped in its fear and pain. I thought about twentieth century singers, as well, and about kingship.

Appropriately, B.B. King Live at the Regal had reached "Sweet Little Angel" when she returned. _You know I asked my baby for a nickel; she gave me a twenty dollar bill._ I took her purse from one hand and a bakery bag from the other and put them on the table. Then I put a mug of tea into her right hand, put that ring back on her left hand, and kissed her. B.B. and Lucille encouraged us in the background.

When we finished that kiss, she grinned and said, "If I ever hear a goddamned thing about what you gave up, I'm gonna rearrange every bone in your body until you're back the way you started."

Ultimately, it wasn't that hard a decision. She was the only person who had ever looked at me as I was—and seen what I could be.

The next thing to do was work out a peace treaty. My mother and Elyse might have had misgivings about coming over to our temporary digs, but they came all the same.

Mom took one look at the two of us, deduced what was still going on, and drew in her breath with a sharp hiss. "I did not believe you could deliberately choose to continue in perversion and degeneracy."

"Legally, morally, and genetically we are well within our rights," I informed her. "You can say what you please."

"This relationship is strange and unnatural." She was pleased to continue attacking us.

"If you're going to mention relationships," retorted Primavera, "the day I visited, although I was only six years old, I already thought you a strange and unnatural mother. Clearly, Richard and I take after you."

My mother _flinched._

"We're not the only ones," I told my Primavera. "Your patient and half-brother Rick," –my mother flinched again—, "is another. Wait until he's back to normal, then you'll find out what he's really like. And Margali, George's daughter, the cute little brunette—." A _big_ wince from my mother that time.

I seized on it with pleasure. "Mom, can you actually be thinking that just because I said that seven-year-old Margali is cute, it means I'm lusting after her? I don't know how she does it, but she manages to think worse of me than I am."

"Your children will be defective."

"Our children will have their mother, who is, among other things, a geneticist, going over their gene patterns very carefully for any dangerous alleles. If we can't make a healthy baby with only our own genes, I see nothing wrong in importing more compatible DNA. Our children will be_ amazing_."

"Enough of this," snapped Elyse. "Get to the point."

"All right," I said. "I will withdraw my suit for the Executive Directorship when the meeting convenes."

"You would have to, under the circumstances," Elyse replied.

"Indeed. I will also endorse Richmond's suit. That's in the short term."

Primavera took over. "I will sign my share of Edward's estate back to you once the funds have been cleared. I don't need it, and frankly, I don't want it. Let my brothers and sisters share it."

"_Thank_ you." Elyse's voice was heavy with sarcasm. "From the woman with an estate in Tuscany."

"Primavera and I will be moving away from A.L.-Bion once the boys have been discharged."

"Good," said my mother icily.

"That's fine with me. How soon will that be?" asked Elyse.

"They should be home by mid-September," answered the doctor. "I'll be glad to get away. You are _not_ invited to the wedding, by the way."

I jumped back in before either of them could get a comment in.

"In exchange for which, you will refrain from making a big deal over our genetic connection. You don't have to keep quiet, lie or deny anything. Just don't deliver long tirades about it. Don't bad-mouth us, either, and no hysterics. If you say anything, you will also explain that ours is a legal union, recognized as such by the state, even if Imagist doctrine is against it. I only ask you to tell the truth; isn't that part of what Imagism is about?"

"I agree. Don't demand I like it as well," said Elyse.

"Mother?"

"Very well. I agree."

"Good. I am keeping the Genet-York directorship."

"No!" snapped my mother.

"Yes. According to the by-laws, any legal member of a directorship family is eligible for the directorship, and once they have it, it is theirs until such time as they die, go to prison, or step down voluntarily. There have been directors in full-service elder care facilities before this. I think it will be the best for all concerned."

"Really," drawled Elyse.

"Yes. I do. But we needn't get into that now. I will keep my vote, and I will stay concerned with A.L.-Bion's fate and future. Lest I find myself supporting Mother in her old age." She looked distinctly unhappy with that prospect.

"Continuing to speak of fates and futures," I continued. "I'm also going to maintain contact with all the kids, just as I always have."

"You will not!" fumed my mother. "Why do you think we'd ever permit it?"

"I can take it before the court, for one thing. _Don't _disregard my legal skills. I'm the closest male relative they have who's alive and not in prison. They've had me in their lives since they came into the family, whether by birth or adoption. They need to know I'm still around and still care for them, even if I'm physically distant."

"You'll never—," my mother began.

"Do you _want _me to seek custody of Margali and Jonathan? Their father's in prison, and if he's called or contacted them since he went in, it's news to me. Their mother took off and left them with you, and she's called exactly twice in six months. You yourself are always leaving them at Elyse's or with care-providers. I've got a strong case for it." The reason I hadn't sought custody already was that I didn't want to drag the kids into what would certainly be a hideous, vindictive mess unless I was certain it was absolutely necessary for their well-being.

We continued to negotiate on such matters for a little while. I got it all down—it's always best to get things in writing. Eventually, I asked them, "Do you have any more terms?"

My mother retreated into Imagist dogma. "The two of you will be damned for this."

"Age before beauty," purred Primavera.

"Not a legal option, sorry." I added. "Nothing else?"

"There_ is_ something else I want. Don't write to me any more." My mother continued. "Don't send me gifts. Don't call. Leave me in peace. I want nothing of either of you and never will."

"You never did. I have come to the conclusion that you never loved any of your children. Edward was committing slow suicide by heart disease. He wanted to be dead, but lacked the courage. The stadium collapse was a blessing to him. George felt unloved, and took money as a poor substitute. And as for me—'All I ever needed to be good was to be loved.'"

"Gaston Leroux." Primavera identified the source of my quote. "The Phantom of the Opera. 'Poor, unhappy Erik!'"

"How did I know you would know that?" I asked. "Except in this case, it's more like, 'Extremely fortunate Richard'.I agree to your terms. Elyse, do you want to be included?"

"You better believe it."

"Good." I drew up an agreement and we all signed it. Elyse and my mother left.

I returned for the vote that afternoon. Primavera came with me to A.L.-Bion for it. I had no time to prepare or plan a speech, but I knew I wanted to make one. I had spent much more than twenty-two years of my life waiting, wanting to say what I thought of Imagism, and this would be the time, if ever there was such a moment. I would not choke. I would not hold back, for fear of finally going too far and saying the unforgivable. I was past that now. I had torched my bridges, and they made a beautiful blaze. I was free.

I _was_ free. I thought of all the headaches, of how A.L.-Bion had been draining me, parasite-like, as it had drained Ed, and George, and old Henry Lancaster, of so much energy, of hope, of potential, as we saw all our days going on, one after another, just like the last. It offered a certain safety, but it took away surprises. Now it would all be Richmond's. He might even be suited to it.

Primavera squeezed my hand. We entered the building, and met my core group just inside. "My office!" I waved them ahead. When I had closed the door, I turned a raised a hand. "Elyse is here?"

"Yes, and she's in with the directors in the conference room."

"I thought as much. Is the auditorium full up?"

"Yes. They're waiting on the opening speech."

"Good. I'll improvise one for them. Short explanation: I'll expand later. Have you met my eldest niece?"

"Elyse Jr.? Yes—."

"That's what you think. Admittedly, it's also what I thought. But no; here she is."

"Hiya, folks!" said Primavera.

"Oh. Oh, no!" They knew what that meant in Imagist A.L.-Bion.

"Oh, yes. I'm going to go in there and withdraw. Now." I steamed out of the office and down to the conference room."

"Honored directors." I greeted the room. Elyse started. They turned, and I saw revolted horror, stern disapproval, avid glee, stony anger, and chilly disdain, all over their faces. "I'm very glad to see you all this afternoon. I believe we are expected in the auditorium?" With murmurings and mutters, the group of directors followed me down the hall.

I mounted the podium and looked out over some several hundred faces. Perhaps as many as a thousand, or twelve hundred. The place was more thoroughly packed than I had ever seen it.

I didn't know them all, of course, but I knew enough of them. At one time, most of these people, but never all of them, would have been traditional Imagists. Labor laws forbid such an exclusion way back then; now the ranks of orthodox Imagism had dwindled due to attrition.

There were new schools of thought about what Imagism should mean. The beliefs had altered, some people adhering to the traditions in theory, but breaking it in practice, like my brothers and their wives, with their alcohol and their cosmetics. My mother was among them, really, with her face-powder and moisturizing creams. Some had rejected it, as I had. Others had embraced a somewhat wider ideal that could accept and understand that a person who had surgery and therapy would live to praise God longer and deeper. Yet Imagism remained Imagism—all image, and precious little God. I had learned this by talking to them, and listening. I had done a lot of listening. I was glad of that.

I was about to rip their ideology into shreds. It was making me somewhat nervous, and ferociously eager, both. I hoped nobody had brought tomatoes to throw. I liked the suit I was wearing, and I didn't want to see it ruined.

"Good afternoon." I said. "Today we select a new Executive Director of A.L.-Bion. Thank you for attending this pre-vote meeting. This is how we Directors can tell that our decision matters something to you. Traditionally, this meeting has opened with a prayer that we should recognize the many faces of God around us and in us. I am going to break from tradition today, but I won't leave God out.

Interpreting the will of God is an uncertain business. I think the greatest danger in it is the tendency to mix up one's own desires with those of God, to see God in one's mirror when we should see Him through a window. I have listened to the phrases, "God the Father" and "God's Laws", and in Imagism—indeed, in many religions, I have seen most often God the disciplinarian, rather than God the nurturer.

I practice law. I have loved the law as though it were another father ever since I could understand the concept that I had rights, and those rights were guaranteed me by the law and protected by the law. In the practice of law, it is held to be better that a few sinners should go unpunished rather than that one innocent person should be condemned wrongly.

Traditional Imagism does not allow for that. Traditional Imagism would rather condemn many people to a wide variety of needless suffering, rather than deviate from what it interprets as the will of God. In Imagism, the phrase, 'Suffer little children to come to me', should read," and I mimed the punctuations as I spoke, "'Suffer, little children, to come to me.' Do you understand?"

They did. A murmur sussurated around the vast hall.

"It's been a couple of centuries now since same-sex marriages became legally possible, and I see a number of people here today who are in such unions, including a few among the Directorship families, and even among the Directors. Some religions still condemn them. One such injunction occurs in the same passage that condones slavery and bars hunchbacks from becoming priests. There's a prime example of interpreting one's self rather than God, because today there is nowhere on this Earth where slavery is legal, and no one is entirely forbidden to serve God because of a birth or genetic defect. No, not even the defect of being female can bar you from serving God, if you choose the right religion. Do you see what I mean?"

Again, yes, the unvocalized response.

"There are very few places where it is considered right that consenting adults should be prohibited from loving and marrying where they choose, but this is one of them." I turned and addressed the Directors. "I could tell that when I entered the conference room."

"Elyse has been spreading the news that Doctor Visconti, who is my fiancée, who would be my Head of Science, should I become Executive Director of A.L.-Bion, is my late brother's pre-marital daughter."

Elyse hadn't spread the news as thoroughly as I just had. A minor shockwave passed through the assembly.

"Primavera is, and we know this, now. Elyse has probably been telling you that we're so depraved that we're going to stay together, marry, and perhaps have children who will simultaneously be my mother's grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Elyse is right. But did she also tell you that she knew this before Primavera and I –consummated our relationship, and said nothing? That she saw the attraction between us, and watched it follow in its natural course, and did not inform us of our genetic connection until after the romantic connection was a fact? Did she tell you that she then attempted to use that knowledge to coerce and injure?"

The attention of the auditorium shifted to Elyse, who suddenly looked naked and afraid. "It wasn't—I didn't—" she spluttered.

I didn't give her any more time to explain herself. "I don't know what else she may have said. I think her malice may have been inspired by resentment and jealousy. I care for her children, you see. I care about their health and well being, their happiness and their futures. I care about my disgraced brother George's children as well. I've tried to take an active role in their lives, and I think she sees it as an attempt to usurp her authority and take for myself the affection due to her. This may be the result."

I paused, and took a badly needed sip of water. I was shaking.

"I am not going to try to persuade you to elect me despite yourselves, even if I could. There is too much ill-will here for me—for us—to stay. I don't want people to watch me hug my seven-year-old niece and wonder if, because I don't consider myself bound by one taboo, I'll start violating others. I don't want to see people watching our unborn children grow larger in their mother's belly and speculate if the baby will show signs of in-breeding or not. I love my fiancée too much to want to put her through that. I love my as-yet-unconcieved children too much, too.

So I am withdrawing my name from the pool of candidates. I personally plan to cast my vote for Theodore Richmond-Stanley." I cast about for something to say about him that was true but kind. "I know from working with him over these past months that he will be scrupulously careful with the consortium finances, that he has a head for business, and I believe he will be a capable administrator and an able leader.

Thank you."

I sat down, and then I was astonished, because somebody stood up and_ started applauding_. Others followed. It wasn't Primavera, who was giving me the same seventeen-Christmas-trees-lit-up look that she had given her father over twenty-two years ago, but Norfolk who began it. It started with my core group, and spread through the entire staff of the Finance Division, (except for Elias Morton-Bishop), and then it spread through the rest of the A.L.-Bion personnel, to the younger members of the Directorship families. They looked somber, proud, and happy all at the same time. Some of them were _crying_.

Finally, Tom and Ellie shook off their mother, who was trying to restrain them bodily, to stand up and clap with the rest. Ellie was crying openly, and Tom was trying hard not to cry.

Margaret Beaufort-Richmond-hyphen-hyphen-Stanley tried to call the room to order, and failed. The applause had to die down on its own.

"At the risk of sounding stupid, why did I get a standing ovation?"

The Directors had voted, me included, and we had retreated to my office for a few minutes before the results were announced.

"He doesn't know?" asked Catesby, who, having been my late brother's personal assistant, was the newest of my personal staff.

"That doesn't surprise me," replied Primavera. "He's always under-valuing himself. I'm trying to break him of that…"

"Well, if anybody could break me, I'm sure it would be you. Really, though, what did I say? I just got up and winged it." I wasn't fishing for compliments, I was nonplussed. I had expected to be cursed off the stage, especially after I criticized Imagism so thoroughly.

"You only made possibly the best ex tempore speech of all time, to begin with," said Radcliffe

"I did?" I had got through it in an overheated, light-headed daze. I had felt naked. There was no protective layer of bullshit between me and my audience.

"That was only part of it," added Norfolk. "I don't think you realize how highly esteemed you are around A.L.-Bion, and before you ask why, let's go over some of the reasons. You kept the company from going under…"

"Opened up the benefits package so people could get real medical care, not just what's sanctioned by Imagism…" continued Catesby.

"Treated people like the little tea-cart lady and the guy who services the chloroplasm vanes with as much respect as if they owned half the company's stock." Norfolk went on.

"You're honest and hard-working without being tight-assed, and that counts for a _lot,_ believe me." Lovell finished.

"Thank you. And while I would say please, keep on saying things like this, I love it, you can come and wake me up at two in the morning to tell me things like this, I didn't do it on purpose. I mean, of course, I did it on purpose, I couldn't do it by accident, but it was more automatic than anything else. I _wanted_ the company to survive and get back on track, and anybody with a gram of common sense would have changed that benefit package. The terms as they were, were barbaric."

"People had been trying to get upper management to change the company policy on the medical coverage for over thirty years, Richard."

"So I was the first person to come along with that gram? It says more about my predecessors than it does of me. And as far as being ordinarily polite to people, I had no idea how to relate to people when I was young, so I read etiquette books. The books told me what to do and say, and it became second nature. I didn't do it to get people to_ like_ me."

"Mirable visu," said Primavera. "Wonders will never cease. They liked you for you. Which makes it all the sweeter, isn't it so?"

"Yes…"

"Um," said Lovell. "We had a quick confab while the vote was going on, and we have a question for the two of you."

"Go ahead and ask."

"What are you going to do now?"

"I don't know." I confessed.

"Personally I'm not staying here, whatever else happens," declared Norfolk. "Richmond's offered me the head accountant job, but he's making Elias Morton-Bishop his CFO, and I will not work under Morton-Bishop. He's hated me ever since I discovered George's peculations."

"Not to mention that Richmond's making Dr. Ingram his head of science. I think that there, he'll be getting what he deserves. I have a similar problem with Richmond, so I'm going to leave A.L. Bion, too. You might say we are especially interested in what you might be planning to do now," said Catesby.

"Whatever the two of you get up to, it'll be more interesting than staying at A.L.-Bion with Richmond-Stanley," added Radcliffe.

They had to wait for an answer, as we were interrupted by an assistant. "They're ready to announce," said the woman.

"Okay. I'm there."

"Mr. Genet-York?" she said, as we went down the hall, back to the auditorium. "I wanted to say that I'm sorry it won't be you. If staff could vote, you'd have gotten it."

"Thank you, Ginny. I appreciate that."

I waited as the vote count was read out. Richmond won, with eleven out of twelve votes. I wondered who the hold out had been; not me.

The new Executive Director of A.L.-Bion got up and made a speech about how much our confidence meant to him, and he would try to live up to it. They applauded him, but they did it perfunctorily, and as he looked out over what was now his staff, the pleasure ebbed from his face, his eyes narrowing. He'd eaten the delicious dessert of that initial moment; now he faced the innumerable series of dry, tasteless meals that comprised the real work of being the CEO.

I stepped up to him at the podium; there was an energetic burst of applause. For me—_for me_. "Ted," I said, and put out my hand. He turned, and looked at me. Was that a puzzled look? No, he was only dour, as he always was.

"Richard," he returned, and took my hand. I shook it firmly, not crushing him, although I could have. Not crushing him, _because _I could have.

"Congratulations. I wish you well." I said, and I meant it.

Why not? He thinks he won. He's the CEO of A.L.-Bion, the most important post and the highest aspiration in a very small circle of people. Let executive directors come and executive directors go. The world's much bigger than A.L.-Bion. He can have that corner of it, and I'll try and content myself with the rest.

Or, rather, _we'll _content ourselves with it, for I am, finally, no longer alone. Not only is Primavera with me, but my core group as well. These are the people with whom, I once said to myself, I could take over the world.

So, between Richmond and I, let's wait and see which one of us makes history. I'll bet people will hardly remember him, a hundred or five hundred years from now.

I bet they'll remember me.

Richard, the third.

**Afterword**

There was a real Richard the Third, and from 1483 to 1485 he was CEO of the real Albion, or rather, King of England. His last name was Plantagenet, and he came from the York branch of the family. He had a brother Edward and a brother George.

George, the duke of Clarence, had suicidally bad judgment. The real George was such a screw-up that my fictional version doesn't really do him justice. He was condemned for treason, among other things, and he may have been executed by drowning in a vat, or butt, of wine. He was married to the elder of two sisters, Isabelle, and they had two surviving children. Richard married the younger sister, Anne, and they had one son.

Edward was King Edward the Fourth, and he was a chronic womanizer whose 'little head' did the thinking for his big head. Edward met a pretty widow, Lady Grey, Elizabeth Woodville. She was older than he was, she had children already, she was poor, she had a huge extended family of unmarried, impoverished siblings—she wasn't a fit bride for a king. But she wouldn't go to bed with him without a ring on her finger and wedding vows. She got them.

Monica Lewinsky and President Clinton only caused a scandal; King Edward and Elizabeth Woodville caused another outbreak of war and a major succession problem, later on. Elizabeth wasn't the first girl who held out on Edward until he agreed to marry her…and that lady was still alive when Ed married Elizabeth. The facts didn't come out until after Edward the Fourth was dead and the country was gearing up for the coronation of Edward the Fifth, the son of Edward and Elizabeth. The marriage was not valid and their children were illegitimate.

At the time, people truly believed that God's wrath would come down if a bastard took the throne, so in the absence of another legal heir, the only legitimate adult male in the York branch of the Plantagenets was Richard.

Richard became King, and although he didn't wear the crown for long, he accomplished good things in the time he had. His legal reforms instituted a bail system, gave the poor access to legal aid, raised jury-selection standards, and forbid seizure of an accused person's property before their trial. He also made laws protecting the freedom of the press, to promote literacy and the free exchange of ideas and information.

In that same time, he also suffered terribly. He lost his son, and then his wife, both to natural illnesses.

Over in Brittany, the Earl of Richmond, Henry Tudor, whose mother was married to Lord Stanley, was raising an army to unseat Richard. He succeeded on the battlefield—and then he succeeded to the throne.

And then…the mystery. Edward and Elizabeth's two sons, the almost King Edward the Fifth, and his little brother, Richard, Duke of York, were living in the Tower of London, which was not just a prison, but also a Royal residence. At some point, they disappeared. But when, and who was responsible?

_Nobody knows. _Henry Tudor, now Henry the Seventh, was married to the boys' sister, Elizabeth—yes, everybody has the same two or three names, this is history, which is sloppy, not fiction which is neatly arranged—and he was the winner. The winner gets to write history.

Henry said Richard had the boys done away with, and oh, yeah, Richard was hunchbacked, and he'd personally killed a lot of people, and had even more done away with, just like the two princes, and he was born with teeth, and even his mother hated him…

Somewhere along the way, about a hundred years after Richard lived and died, an actor-playwright called William Shakespeare got the idea to write a play about him. Shakespeare's Richard is evil, he's nasty, he's deformed—but he's also charming and witty, and he gets the audience on his side, at least until the murder of the boys and of his wife Anne.

Many people, this author included, believe the historic Richard was innocent of those murders, and deplore the blackening of his name, while at the same time, retain a sneaky fondness for the Shakespearian Richard as well.

Hence, this book, which is loosely based on the play. I've tried to capture the fun of the drama while also infusing my Richard with some of the virtues of the real man. If by any chance, you have been intrigued and entertained, I strongly urge you to read more about the historic Richard and his times.

For the truly obsessed, (again, this author included) there is a Richard III society, dedicated to reclaiming his good name and promoting scholarship about his life and the medieval period in which he lived. Membership includes inclusion to the society listserve, several publications a year, and the right to attend an annual meeting.

Recommended Reading:

Dockray, Keith. Richard III: A Sourcebook, 1997.

Fields, Bertram. Royal Blood, 1998.

Kendall, Paul Murray. Richard III, 1955.

Shakespeare, William. Henry VI, part 3, Richard III.

Tey, Josephine. The Daughter of Time, 1951.


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